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THE 

ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 


R.  H.  TAWNEY 


NEW  YORK 
HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1920,   UV 
HARCOURT,   BRACE  AND   HOWE,   INC. 

[(1-3 -47] 


rRIHTF.D    IN     THF.    trviTFD    STATrS    OF    AMEIirA 


H'-b 

171 


CONTENTS 

CHA.PTER 

I  Introductory 

II  Rights  and  Functions  . 

III  The  Acquisitive  Society 

IV  The  Nemesis  of  Industrialism 
.    V  Property  and  Creative  Work 

VI  The  Functional  Society     . 

VII  Industry  as  a  Profession   . 

VIII  The  "  Vicious  Circle  "  . 

IX  The  Condition  of  Efficiency 

X  The  Position  of  the  Brain  Worker 

XI  PoRRO  Unum  Necessarium    . 


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The  author  desires  to  express 
his  acktwzcledf/meuts  to  the 
Editor  of  the  Hibbert  Journal 
for  permission  to  reprint  an 
article    which   appeared   in  it. 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 


INTRODUCTORY 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  the  characteristic  virtue  of 
Englishmen  is  their  power  of  sustained  practical 
activity,  and  their  characteristic  vice  a  reluctance  to  test 
the  quality  of  that  activity  by  reference  to  principles. 
They  are  incurious  as  to  theory,  take  fundamentals  for 
granted,  and  are  more  interested  in  the  state  of  the  roads 
than  in  their  place  on  the  map.  And  it  might  fairly  be 
argued  that  in  ordinary  times  that  combination  of  in- 
tellectual tameness  with  practical  energy  is  sufficiently 
serviceable  to  explain,  if  not  to  justify,  the  equanimity 
with  which  its  possessors  bear  the  criticism  of  more 
mentally  adventurous  nations.  It  is  the  mood  of  those 
who  have  made  their  bargain  with  fate  and  are  content 
to  take  what  it  offers  without  re-opening  the  deal.  It 
leaves  the  mind  free  to  concentrate  undisturbed  upon 
profitable  activities,  because  it  is  not  distracted  by  a 
taste  for  unprofitable  speculations.  Most  generations,  it 
might  be  said,  walk  in  a  path  which  they  neither  make, 
nor  discover,  but  accept;  the  main  thing  is  that  they 
should  march.  The  blinkers  worn  by  Englishmen  en- 
able them  to  trot  all  the  more  steadily  along  the  beaten 

1 


2  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

road,  without  being  disturbed  by  curiosity  as  to  their 
destination. 

But  if  the  medicine  of  the  constitution  ought  not  to 
be  made  its  daily  food,  neither  can  its  daily  food  be 
made  its  medicine.  There  are  times  which  are  not  ordi- 
nary, and  in  such  times  it  is  not  enough  to  follow  the 
road.  It  is  necessary  to  know  where  it  leads,  and,  if 
it  leads  nowhere,  to  follow  another.  The  search  for 
another  involves  reflection,  which  is  uncongenial  to  the 
bustling  people  who  describe  themselves  as  practical, 
because  they  take  things  as  they  are  and  leave  them  as 
they  are.  But  the  practical  thing  for  a  traveler  who 
is  uncertain  of  his  path  is  not  to  proceed  with  the  utmost 
rapidity  in  the  wrong  direction :  it  is  to  consider  how 
to  find  the  right  one.  And  the  practical  thing  for  a 
nation  which  has  stumbled  upon  one  of  the  turning- 
points  of  history  is  not  to  behave  as  though  nothing  very 
important  were  involved,  as  if  it  did  not  matter  whether 
it  turned  to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  went  up  hill  or 
down  dale,  provided  that  it  continued  doing  with  a 
little  more  energy  what  it  has  done  hitherto;  but  to 
consider  whether  what  it  has  done  hitherto  is  wise,  and, 
if  it  is  not  wise,  to  alter  it.  "When  the  broken  ends  of 
its  industry,  its  politics,  its  social  organization,  have  to 
be  pieced  together  after  a  catastrophe,  it  must  make  a 
decision ;  for  it  makes  a  decision  even  if  it  refuses  to 
decide.  If  it  is  to  make  a  decision  which  will  wear,  it 
must  travel  beyond  the  philosophy  momentarily  in  favor 
with  the  proprietors  of  its  newspapers.  Unless  it  is  to 
move  with  the  energetic  futility  of  a  squirrel  in  a  revolv- 
ing cage,  it  must  have  a  clear  apprehension  both  of  the 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

deficiency  of  what  is,  and  of  the  character  of  what  ought 
to  be.  And  to  obtain  this  apprehension  it  must  appeal 
to  some  standard  more  stable  than  the  momentary  exi- 
gencies of  its  commerce  or  industry  or  social  life,  and 
judge  them  by  it.  It  must,  in  short,  have  recourse  to 
Principles. 

Such  considerations  are,  perhaps,  not  altogether  ir- 
relevant at  a  time  when  facts  have  forced  upon  English- 
men the  reconsideration  of  their  social  institutions 
which  no  appeal  to  theory  could  induce  them  to  under- 
take. An  appeal  to  principles  is  the  condition  of  any 
considerable  reconstruction  of  society,  because  social  in- 
stitutions are  the  visible  expression  of  the  scale  of  moral 
values  which  rules  the  minds  of  individuals,  and  it  is 
impossible  to  alter  institutions  without  altering  that 
moral  valuation.  Parliament,  industrial  organizations, 
the  whole  complex  machinery  through  which  society  ex- 
presses itself,  is  a  mill  which  grinds  only  what  is  put 
into  it,  and  when  nothing  is  put  into  it  grinds  air. 
There  are  many,  of  course,  who  desire  no  alteration,  and 
who,  when  it  is  attempted,  will  oppose  it.  They  have 
found  the  existing  economic  order  profitable  in  the  past. 
They  desire  only  such  changes  as  will  insure  that  it  is 
equally  profitable  in  the  future.  Quand  le  Roi  avail  hu, 
la  Pologne  etait  ivre.  They  are  genuinely  unable  to 
understand  why  their  countrymen  cannot  bask  happily 
by  the  fire  which  warms  themselves,  and  ask,  like  the 
French  farmer-general : — "  When  everything  goes  so 
happily,  why  trouble  to  change  it  ?  "  Such  persons  are 
to  be  pitied,  for  they  lack  the  social  quality  which  is 


4  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

proper  to  man.  But  they  do  not  need  argument;  for 
Heaven  has  denied  them  one  of  the  faculties  required  to 
apprehend  it. 

There  are  others,  however,  who  are  conscious  of  the 
desire  for  a  new  social  order,  but  who  yet  do  not  grasp 
the  implications  of  their  own  desire.  ^len  may  gen- 
uinely sympathize  with  the  demand  for  a  radical 
change.  They  may  be  conscious  of  social  evils  and  sin- 
cerely anxious  to  remove  them.  They  may  set  up  a 
new  department,  and  appoint  new  officials,  and  invent 
a  new  name  to  express  their  resolution  to  effect  some- 
thing more  drastic  than  reform,  and  less  disturbing 
than  revolution.  But  unless  they  will  take  the  ])ains, 
not  only  to  act,  but  to  reflect,  they  end  by  effecting 
nothing.  For  they  deliver  themselves  bound  to  those 
who  think  they  are  practical,  because  they  take  their 
philosophy  so  much  for  granted  as  to  be  unconscious 
of  its  implications,  and  directly  they  try  to  act,  that 
philosophy  re-asserts  itself,  and  serves  as  an  over- 
ruling force  which  presses  their  action  more  deeply  into 
the  old  ciiannels.  ''  Unhappy  man  that  I  am ;  wlio 
shall  deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  "  When 
they  desire  to  place  their  economic  life  on  a  better  foun- 
dation, they  repeat,  like  parrots,  the  word  "  Produc- 
tivity," because  that  is  the  word  that  rises  first  in  their 
minds;  regardless  of  the  fact  that  productivity  is  the 
foundation  on  which  it  is  based  already,  that  increased 
productivity  is  the  one  characteristic  achievement  of  the 
age  before  the  war,  as  religion  was  of  the  Middle  Ages 
or  art  of  classical  Athens,  and  that  it  is  precisely  in  the 
century  which  has  seen  the  greatest  increase  in  prodiic- 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

tivitj  since  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  that  economic 
discontent  has  been  most  acute.  When  they  are  touched 
by  social  compunction,  they  can  think  of  nothing  more 
original  than  the  diminution  of  poverty,  because  pov- 
erty, being  the  opposite  of  the  riches  which  they  value 
most,  seems  to  them  the  most  terrible  of  human  af- 
flictions. They  do  not  understand  that  poverty  is  a 
symptom  and  a  consequence  of  social  disorder,  while  the 
disorder  itself  is  something  at  once  more  fundamental 
and  more  incorrigible,  and  that  the  quality  in  their 
social  life  which  causes  it  to  demoralize  a  few  by  exces- 
sive riches,  is  also  the  quality  which  causes  it  to  de- 
moralize many  by  excessive  poverty. 

"  But  increased  production  is  important."  Of  course 
it  is !  That  plenty  is  good  and  scarcity  evil — it  needs 
no  ghost  from  the  graves  of  the  past  five  years  to  tell 
us  that.  But  plenty  depends  upon  co-operative  effort, 
and  co-operation  upon  moral  principles.  And  moral 
principles  are  what  the  prophets  of  this  dispensation 
despise.  So  the  world  ''  continues  in  scarcity,"  be- 
cause it  is  too  grasping  and  too  short-sighted  to  seek 
that  "  which  maketh  men  to  be  of  one  mind  in  a  house." 
The  well-intentioned  schemes  for  social  reorganization 
put  forward  by  its  commercial  teachers  are  abortive,  be- 
cause they  endeavor  to  combine  incompatibles,  and,  if 
they  disturb  everything,  settle  nothing.  They  are  like  a 
man  who,  when  he  finds  that  his  shoddy  boots  wear 
badly,  orders  a  pair  two  sizes  larger  instead  of  a  pair 
of  good  leather,  or  who  makes  up  for  putting  a  bad 
sixpence  in  the  plate  on  Sunday  by  putting  in  a  bad 
shilling  the  next.    And  when  their  fit  of  feverish  energy 


6  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

has  spent  itself,  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  for  it 
except  disillusionment,  they  cry  that  reform  is  imprac- 
ticable, and  blame  human  nature,  when  what  they  ought 
to  blame  is  themselves. 

Yet  all  the  time  the  principles  upon  which  industry 
should  be  based  are  simple,  however  difficult  it  may  be 
to  apply  them ;  and  if  they  are  overlooked  it  is  not  be- 
cause they  are  difficult,  but  because  they  are  elementary. 
They  are  simple  because  industry  is  simple.  An  in- 
dustry, when  all  is  said,  is,  in  its  essence,  nothing  more 
mysterious  than  a  body  of  men  associated,  in  various 
degrees  of  competition  and  co-operation,  to  win  their 
living  by  providing  the  community  with  some  service 
which  it  requires.  Organize  it  as  you  will,  let  it  be  a 
group  of  craftsmen  laboring  with  hammer  and  chisel, 
or  peasants  plowing  their  own  fields,  or  armies  of 
mechanics  of  a  hundred  different  trades  constructing 
ships  which  are  miracles  of  complexity  with  machines 
which  are  the  climax  of  centuries  of  invention,  its  func- 
tion is  service,  its  method  is  association.  Because  its 
function  is  service,  an  industry  as  a  whole  has  rights 
and  duties  towards  the  community,  the  abrogation  of 
which  involves  privilege.  Because  its  method  is  asso' 
ciation,  the  different  parties  within  it  have  rights  and 
duties  towards  each  other;  and  the  neglect  or  perversion 
of  these  involves  oppression. 

The  conditions  of  a  right  organization  of  industry 
are,  therefore,  permanent,  unchanging,  and  capable  of 
being  apprehended  by  the  most  elementary  intelligence, 
provided  it  will  read  the  nature  of  its  countrymen  in  the 
large  outlines  of  history,  not  in  the  bloodless  abstrac- 


INTEODUCTORY  7 

tions  of  experts.  The  first  is  that  it  should  be  subordi- 
nated to  the  community  in  such  a  way  as  to  render  the 
best  service  technically  possible,  that  those  who  render 
no  service  should  not  be  paid  at  all,  because  it  is  of 
the  essence  of  a  function  that  it  should  find  its  mean- 
ing in  the  satisfaction,  not  of  itself,  but  of  the  end  which 
it  serves.  The  second  is  that  its  direction  and  govern- 
ment should  be  in  the  hands  of  persons  who  are  re- 
sponsible to  those  who  are  directed  and  governed,  be- 
cause it  is  the  condition  of  economic  freedom  that  men 
should  not  be  ruled  by  an  authority  which  they  cannot 
control.  The  industrial  problem,  in  fact,  is  a  problem 
of  right,  not  merely  of  material  misery,  and  because  it 
is  a  problem  of  right  it  is  most  acute  among  those 
sections  of  the  working  classes  whose  material  misery 
is  least.  It  is  a  question,  first  of  Function,  and  sec- 
ondly of  Freedom. 


n 

RIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS 

A  FUNCTION  may  be  defined  as  an  activity  which  em- 
bodies and  expresses  the  idea  of  social  purpose.  The 
essence  of  it  is  that  the  agent  does  not  perform  it  merely 
for  personal  gain  or  to  gratify  himself,  but  recognizes 
that  he  is  responsible  for  its  discharge  to  some  higher 
authority.  The  purpose  of  industry  is  obvious.  It  is 
to  supply  man  with  things  which  are  necessary,  useful 
or  beautiful,  and  thus  to  bring  life  to  body  or  spirit. 
In  so  far  as  it  is  governed  by  this  end,  it  is  among  the 
most  important  of  human  activities.  In  so  far  as  it  is 
diverted  from  it,  it  may  be  harmless,  amusing,  or  even 
exhilarating  to  those  who  carry  it  on,  but  it  possesses 
no  more  social  significance  than  the  orderly  business  of 
ants  and  bees,  the  strutting  of  peacocks,  or  the  struggles 
of  carnivorous  animals  over  carrion. 

Men  have  normally  appreciated  this  fact,  however  un- 
willing or  unable  they  may  have  been  to  act  upon  it; 
and  therefore  from  time  to  time,  in  so  far  as  they  have 
been  able  to  control  the  forces  of  violence  and  greed, 
they  have  adopted  various  expedients  for  emphasizing 
the  social  quality  of  economic  activity.  It  is  not  easy, 
however,  to  emphasize  it  elTectively,  because  to  do  so 
requires  a  constant  effort  of  will,  against  which  ego- 
tistical instincts  are  in  rebellion,  and  because,  if  that 
will  is  to  prevail,  it  must  be  embodied  in  some  social 


EIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS  9 

and  political  organization,  which  may  itself  hecome  so 
arbitrary,  tyrannical  and  corrupt  as  to  thwart  the  per- 
formance of  function  instead  of  promoting  it.  When 
this  process  of  degeneration  has  gone  far,  as  in  most 
European  countries  it  had  by  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  the  indispensable  thing  is  to  break  the 
dead  organization  up  and  to  clear  the  ground.  In  the 
course  of  doing  so,  the  individual  is  emancipated  and 
his  rights  are  enlarged ;  but  the  idea  of  social  purpose  is 
discredited  by  the  discredit  justly  attaching  to  the  obso- 
lete order  in  which  it  is  embodied. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  in  the  new  indus- 
trial societies  which  arose  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  regime 
the  dominant  note  should  have  been  the  insistence  upon 
individual  rights,  irrespective  of  any  social  purpose  to 
which  their  exercise  contributed.  The  economic  ex- 
pansion which  concentrated  population  on  the  coal-meas- 
ures was,  in  essence,  an  immense  movement  of  coloniza- 
tion drifting  from  the  south  and  east  to  the  north  and 
west ;  and  it  was  natural  that  in  those  regions  of  Eng- 
land, as  in  the  American  settlements,  the  characteristic 
philosophy  should  be  that  of  the  pioneer  and  the  mining 
camp.  The  change  of  social  quality  was  profound.  But 
in  England,  at  least,  it  was  gradual,  and  the  '^  industrial 
revolution,"  though  catastrophic  in  its  effects,  was  only 
the  visible  climax  of  generations  of  subtle  moral  change. 
The  rise  of  modern  economic  relations,  which  may  be 
dated  in  England  from  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  was  coincident  with  the  growth  of  a  political 
theory  which  replaced  the  conception  of  purpose  by  that 
of  mechanism.     During  a  great  part  of  history  men  had 


10  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

found  the  significance  of  their  social  order  in  its  rela- 
tion to  the  universal  purposes  of  religion.  It  stood  as 
one  rung  in  a  ladder  which  stretclied  from  hell  to  Para- 
dise, and  the  classes  who  composed  it  were  the  hands, 
the  feet,  the  head  of  a  corporate  body  which  was  itself 
a  micrncosni  imperfectly  reflecting  a  larger  universe. 
When  the  Reformation  made  the  Church  a  department 
of  the  secular  government,  it  undermined  the  already  en- 
feebled spiritual  forces  which  had  erected  that  sublime, 
but  too  much  elaborated,  synthesis.  But  its  influence 
remained  for  nearly  a  century  after  the  roots  which  fed 
it  had  been  severed.  It  was  the  atmosphere  into  which 
men  were  born,  and  from  which,  however  practical,  or 
even  Machiavellian,  they  could  not  easily  disengage 
their  spirits.  Nor  was  it  inconvenient  for  the  new  state- 
craft to  see  the  weight  of  a  traditional  religious  sanction 
added  to  its  own  concern  in  the  subordination  of  all 
classes  and  interests  to  the  common  end,  of  which  it 
conceived  itself,  and  during  the  greater  part  of  the  six- 
teenth century  was  commonly  conceived,  to  be  the  guar- 
dian. The  lines  of  the  social  structure  were  no  longer 
supposed  to  reproduce  in  miniature  the  plan  of  a  uni- 
versal order.  But  common  habits,  common  traditions 
and  beliefs,  common  pressure  from  above  gave  them  a 
unity  of  direction,  which  restrained  the  forces  of  indi- 
vidual variation  and  lateral  expansion;  and  the  center 
towards  which  they  converged,  formerly  a  Church  pos- 
sessing some  of  the  characteristics  of  a  State,  was  imw  a 
State  that  had  clothed  itself  with  many  of  the  attributes 
of  a  Church. 

The  difference  between  the  England  of  Shakespeare, 


RIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS  11 

still  visited  by  the  ghosts  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the 
England  which  merged  in  1700  from  the  fierce  polemics 
of  the  last  two  generations,  was  a  difference  of  social  and 
political  theory  even  more  than  of  constitutional  and 
political  arrangements.  Not  only  the  facts,  but  the 
minds  which  appraised  them,  were  profoundly  modified. 
The  essence  of  the  change  was  the  disappearance  of  the 
idea  that  social  institutions  and  economic  activities  were 
related  to  common  ends,  which  gave  them  their  signifi- 
cance and  which  served  as  their  criterion.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  both  the  State  and  the  Church  had 
abdicated  that  part  of  the  sphere  which  had  consisted  in 
the  maintenance  of  a  common  body  of  social  ethics; 
what  was  left  of  it  was  repression  of  a  class,  not  the 
discipline  of  a  nation.  Opinion  ceased  to  regard  social 
institutions  and  economic  activity  as  amenable,  like 
personal  conduct,  to  moral  criteria,  because  it  was  no 
longer  influenced  by  the  spectacle  of  institutions  which, 
arbitrary,  capricious,  and  often  corrupt  in  their  prac- 
tical operation,  had  been  the  outward  symbol  and  ex- 
pression of  the  subordination  of  life  to  purposes  trans- 
cending private  interests.  That  part  of  government 
which  had  been  concerned  with  social  administration, 
if  it  did  not  end,  became  at  least  obsolescent.  For  such 
democracy  as  had  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  dead, 
and  the  democracy  of  the  Revolution  was  not  yet  born, 
so  that  government  passed  into  the  lethargic  hand  of 
classes  who  wielded  the  power  of  the  State  in  the  inter- 
ests of  an  irresponsible  aristocracy.  And  the  Church 
was  even  more  remote  from  the  daily  life  of  mankind 
than  the  State.     Philanthropy  abounded;  but  religion, 


12  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

once  the  ^eatest  social  force,  had  become  a  thin^  as  pri- 
vate and  individual  as  the  estate  of  the  squire  or  the 
working  clothes  of  the  laborer.  There  were  special  dis- 
pensations and  occasional  interventions,  like  the  acts  of 
a  monarch  who  reprieved  a  criminal  or  signed  an  order 
for  his  execution.  But  what  was  familiar,  and  human 
and  lovable — what  was  Christian  in  Christianity  had 
largely  disappeared.  God  had  been  thrust  into  the 
frigid  altitudes  of  infinite  space.  There  was  a  limited 
monarchy  in  Heaven,  as  well  as  upon  earth.  Provi- 
dence was  the  spectator  of  the  curious  machine  which 
it  had  constructed  and  set  in  motion,  but  the  operation 
I  if  which  it  was  neither  able  nor  willing  to  control.  Like 
tiie  occasional  intervention  of  the  Crown  in  the  pro- 
ceedings of  Parliament,  its  wisdom  was  revealed  in  the 
infrequency  of  its  interference. 

The  natural  consequence  of  the  abdication  of  authori- 
ties which  had  stood,  however  imperfectly,  for  a  common 
purpose  in  social  organization,  was  the  gradual  disap- 
pearance from  social  thought  of  the  idea  of  purpose  it- 
self. Its  place  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  taken  by 
the  idea  of  mechanism.  The  conception  of  men  as 
united  to  each  other,  and  of  all  mankind  as  unifecl  to 
God,  by  mutual  obligations  arising  from  their  relation 
to  a  common  end,  which  vaguely  conceived  and  imper- 
fectly realized,  had  been  the  keystone  holding  together 
the  social  fabric,  ceased  to  be  impressed  upon  men's 
minds,  when  Church  and  State  withdrew  from  the  center 
of  social  life  to  its  circumference.  What  remained  when 
the  keystone  of  the  arch  was  removed,  was  private  rights 
and  private  interests,  the  materials  of  a  sneiety  rather 


RIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS  13 

than  a  society  itself.  These  rights  and  interests  were 
the  natural  order  which  had  been  distorted  by  the  ambi- 
tions of  kings  and  priests,  and  which  emerged  when  the 
artificial  super-structure  disappeared,  because  they  were 
the  creation,  not  of  man,  but  of  Nature  herself.  They 
had  been  regarded  in  the  past  as  relative  to  some  public 
end,  whether  religion  or  national  welfare.  Hencefor- 
ward they  were  thought  to  be  absolute  and  indefeasible, 
and  to  stand  by  their  own  virtue.  They  were  the  ulti- 
mate political  and  social  reality;  and  since  they  were 
the  ultimate  reality,  they  were  not  subordinate  to  other 
aspects  of  society,  but  other  aspects  of  society  were 
subordinate  to  them. 

The  State  could  not  encroach  upon  these  rights,  for 
the  State  existed  for  their  maintenance.  They  deter- 
mined the  relation  of  classes,  for  the  most  obvious  and 
fundamental  of  all  rights  was  property — property  abso- 
lute and  unconditioned — and  those  who  possessed  it 
were  regarded  as  the  natural  governors  of  those  who  did 
not.  Society  arose  from  their  exercise,  through  the  con- 
tracts of  individual  with  individual.  It  fulfilled  its 
object  in  so  far  as,  by  maintaining  contractual  freedom, 
it  secured  full  scope  for  their  unfettered  exercise.  It 
failed  in  so  far  as,  like  the  French  monarchy,  it  over- 
rode them  by  the  use  of  an  arbitrary  authority.  Thus 
conceived,  society  assumed  something  of  the  appearance 
of  a  great  joint-stock  company,  in  which  political  power 
and  the  receipt  of  dividends  were  justly  assigned  tu 
those  who  held  the  most  numerous  shares.  The  currents 
of  social  activity  did  not  converge  upon  common  ends, 
but  were  dispersed  through  a  multitude  of  channels, 


14  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

created  by  the  private  interests  of  the  individuals  who 
composed  society.  But  in  their  very  variety  and  spon- 
taneity, in  the  very  absence  of  any  attempt  to  relate 
them  to  a  larger  purpose  than  that  of  the  individual,  lay 
the  best  security  of  its  attainment.  There  is  a  mysti- 
cism of  reason  as  well  as  of  emotion,  and  the  eitrhtcenth 
century  found,  in  the  beneficence -of  natural  instincts, 
a  substitute  for  the  God  whom  it  had  exptdled 
from  contact  with  society,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
identify  them. 

"  Thus  God  and  nature  planned  the  general  frame 
And  bade  self-love  and  social  be  the  same." 

The  result  of  such  ideas  in  the  world  of  practice  was 
a  society  which  was  ruled  by  law,  not  by  the  caprice 
of  Governments,  but  which  recognized  no  moral  limita- 
tion on  the  pursuit  by  individuals  of  their  economic 
self-interest.  In  the  world  of  thought,  it  was  a  political 
philosophy  which  made  rights  the  foundation  of  the 
social  order,  and  which  considered  the  discharge  of  obli- 
gations, when  it  considered  it  at  all,  as  emerging  by  an 
inevitable  process  from  their  free  exercise.  The  first 
famous  exponent  of  this  philosophy  was  Locke,  in  whom 
the  dominant  conception  is  the  indefeasibility  of  private 
rights,  not  the  pre-ordained  harmony  between  private 
rights  and  public  welfare.  In  the  great  French  writers 
who  prepared  the  way  for  the  Revolution,  while  b<'liev- 
ing  that  they  were  the  servants  of  an  enlightened  ab- 
solutism, there  is  an  almost  equal  emphasis  upon  the 
sanctity   of   rights   and    upon    the    infallibility   of   the 


RIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS  15 

alchemy  by  which  the  pursuit  of  private  ends  is  trans- 
muted into  the  attainment  of  public  good.  Though 
their  writings  reveal  the  influence  of  the  conception  of 
society  as  a  self-adjusting  mechanism,  which  afterwards 
became  the  most  characteristic  note  of  the  English  in- 
dividualism, what  the  French  Revolution  burned  into 
the  mind  of  Europe  was  the  former  not  the  latter.  In 
England  the  idea  of  right  had  been  negative  and  de- 
fensive, a  barrier  to  the  encroachment  of  Governments. 
The  French  leapt  to  the  attack  from  trenches  which  the 
English  had  been  content  to  defend,  and  in  France  the 
idea  became  affirmative  and  militant,  not  a  weapon  of 
defense,  but  a  principle  of  social  organization.  The 
attempt  to  refound  society  upon  rights,  and  rights 
springing  not  from  musty  charters,  but  from  the  very 
nature  of  man  himself,  was  at  once  the  triumph  and  the 
limitation  of  the  Revolution.  It  gave  it  the  enthusiasm 
and  infectious  power  of  religion. 

What  happened  in  England  might  seem  at  first 
sight  to  have  been  precisely  the  reverse.  English  prac- 
tical men,  whose  thoughts  were  pitched  in  a  lower  key, 
were  a  little  shocked  by  the  pomp  and  brilliance  of  that 
tremendous  creed.  They  had  scanty  sympathy  with  the 
absolute  affirmations  of  France.  What  captured  their 
imagination  was  not  the  right  to  liberty,  which  made 
no  appeal  to  their  commercial  instincts,  but  the  expedi- 
ency of  liberty,  which  did ;  and  when  the  Revolution  had 
revealed  the  explosive  power  of  the  idea  of  natural  right, 
they  sought  some  less  menacing  formula.  It  had  been 
offered  them  first  by  Adam  Smith  and  his  precursors, 
who  showed  how  the  mechanism  of  economic  life  con- 


IC  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

verted  "  as  with  an  invisible  band/'  the  exercise  of  in- 
dividual rigbts  into  the  instrument  of  public  good. 
Ijenthaiii,  wbo  despised  metaphysical  subtleties,  and 
thought  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  as  absurd 
as  any  other  dogmatic  religion,  completed  the  new 
orientation  by  supjdying  the  final  criterion  of  political 
institutions  in  the  principle  of  Utility.  Henceforward 
emphasis  was  transferred  from  the  right  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  exercise  his  freedom  as  he  pleased  to  the  ex- 
pediency of  an  undisturbed  exercise  of  freedom  to 
society. 

The  change  is  significant.  It  is  the  difference  be- 
tween the  universal  and  equal  citizenship  of  France, 
with  its  five  million  peasant  proprietors,  and  the  organ- 
ized inequality  of  England  established  solidly  upon  class 
traditions  and  class  institutions;  the  descent  from  hope 
to  resignation,  from  the  fire  and  passion  of  an  age  of 
illimitable  vistas  to  the  monotonous  beat  of  the  factory 
engine,  from  Turgot  and  Condorcet  to  the  melancholy 
mathematical  creed  of  Bentham  and  Ricardo  and  James 
]\Iill.  Mankind  has,  at  least,  this  superiority  over  its 
pliilosophers,  that  great  movements  spring  from  the  heart 
and  embody  a  faith,  not  the  nice  adjustments  of  th«' 
hedonistic  calculus.  So  in  the  name  of  the  rights  of 
property  France  abolished  in  three  years  a  great  mass 
of  property  rights  which,  under  the  old  regime  had 
robbed  the  peasant  of  })art  of  the  produce  of  his  labor, 
and  the  social  transformation  survived  a  whole  world 
of  political  changes.  In  England  the  glad  tidings  of 
democracy  were  broken  too  discreetly  to  reach  the  ears 
of  the  hind  in  the  furrow  or  the  shepherd  on  the  hill; 


EIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS  17 

there  were  political  changes  without  a  social  transfor- 
mation. The  doctrine  of  Utility,  though  trenchant  in 
the  sphere  of  politics,  involved  no  considerable  interfer- 
ence with  the  fundamentals  of  the  social  fabric.  Its 
exponents  were  principally  concerned  with  the  removal 
of  political  abuses  and  legal  anomalies.  They  attacked 
sinecures  and  pensions  and  the  criminal  code  and  the 
procedure  of  the  law  courts.  But  they  touched  only 
the  surface  of  social  institutions.  They  thought  it  a 
monstrous  injustice  that  the  citizen  should  pay  one-tenth 
of  his  income  in  taxation  to  an  idle  Government,  but 
quite  reasonable  that  he  should  pay  one-fifth  of  it  in 
rent  to  an  idle  landlord. 

The  difference,  neverthelesss,  was  one  of  emphasis 
and  expression,  not  of  principle.  It  mattered  very  little 
in  practice  whether  private  property  and  unfettered  eco- 
nomic freedom  were  stated,  as  in  France,  to  be  natural 
rights,  or  whether,  as  in  England,  they  were  merely 
assumed  once  for  all  to  be  expedient.  In  either  case 
they  were  taken  for  granted  as  the  fundamentals  upon 
which  social  organization  was  to  be  based,  and  about 
which  no  further  argument  was  admissible.  Though 
Bentham  argued  that  rights  were  derived  from  utility, 
not  from  nature,  he  did  not  push  his  analysis  so  far  as 
to  argue  that  any  particular  right  was  relative  to  any 
particular  function,  and  thus  endorsed  indiscrimi- 
nately rights  which  were  not  accompanied  by  service 
as  well  as  rights  which  were.  While  eschewing,  in 
short,  the  phraseology  of  natural  rights,  the  English 
Utilitarians  retained  something  not  unlike  the  substance 
of  them.     For  they  assumed  that  private  property  in 


18  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

land,  and  the  private  ownership  of  capital,  were  natural 
institutions,  and  p;ave  them,  indeed,  a  new  lease  of  life, 
by  proving  to  their  own  satisfaction  that  social  well- 
being  must  result  from  their  continued  exercise.  Their 
negative  was  as  important  as  their  positive  teaching.  It 
was  a  conductor  which  diverted  the  lightning.  Behind 
their  political  theory,  behind  the  practical  conduct, 
which  as  always,  continues  to  express  theory  long  after 
it  has  been  discredited  in  the  world  of  thought,  lay  the 
acceptance  of  absolute  rights  to  property  and  to  eco- 
nomic freedom  as  the  unquestioned  center  of  social 
organization. 

The  result  of  that  attitude  was  momentous.  The 
motive  and  inspiration  of  the  Liberal  Movement  of 
the  eighteenth  century  had  been  the  attack  on  Privi- 
lege. But  the  creed  "which  had  exorcised  the  specter 
of  agrarian  feudalism  haunting  village  and  chdleau 
in  France,  was  impotent  to  disarm  the  new  ogre  of 
industrialism  which  was  stretching  its  limbs  in  the 
north  of  England.  When,  shorn  of  its  splendors  and 
illusions,  liberalism  triumphed  in  England  in  1.S32, 
it  carried  without  criticism  into  the  new  world  of 
capitalist  industry  categories  of  private  property  and 
freedom  of  contract  which  had  been  forged  in  the  sim- 
pler economic  environment  of  the  pre-industrial  era. 
In  England  these  categories  are  being  bent  and  twisted 
till  they  are  no  longer  recognizable,  and  will,  in  time, 
be  made  harmless.  In  America,  where  necessity  com- 
pelled the  crystallization  of  principles  in  a  constitu- 
tion, they  have  the  rigidity  of  an  iron  jacket.  The 
magnificent   formula*    in   which    a    society   of   farmers 


[ 


RIGHTS  AND  FUNCTIONS  19 

and  master  craftsmen  enshrined  its  philosophy  of  free- 
dom are  in  danger  of  becoming  fetters  used  by  an 
Anglo-Saxon  business  aristocracy  to  bind  insurgent 
movements  on  the  part  of  an  immigrant  and  semi- 
servile  proletariat. 


Ill 

THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

This  doctrine  has  been  qualified  in  practice  by  par- 
ticular limitations  to  avert  particular  evils  and  to  meet 
exceptional  emergencies.  But  it  is  limited  in  special 
cases  precisely  because  its  general  validity  is  regarded 
as  beyond  controversy,  and,  up  to  the  eve  of  the  present 
war,  it  was  the  working  faith  of  modern  economic 
civilization.  What  it  implies  is,  that  the  foundation 
of  society  is  found,  not  in  functions,  but  in  rights; 
that  rights  are  not  deduciblc  from  the  discharge  of 
functions,  so  that  the  acquisition  of  wealth  and  the 
enjoyment  of  property  are  contingent  upon  the  per- 
formances of  services,  but  that  the  individual  enters 
the  world  equipped  with  rights  to  the  free  disposal 
of  his  property  and  the  pursuit  of  his  economic  self- 
interest,  and  that  these  rights  are  anterior  to,  and  in- 
dependent of,  any  service  which  he  may  render.  True, 
the  ser\'ice  of  society  will,  in  fact,  it  is  assumed,  re- 
sult from  their  exercise.  But  it  is  not  the  primary 
motive  and  criterion  of  industry,  but  a  secondary  con- 
sequence, which  emerges  incidentally  through  the  ex- 
rrcise  of  rights,  a  consequence  which  is  attained,  in- 
deed, in  practice,  but  which  is  attained  without  being 
sought.  It  is  not  tlic  end  at  which  economic  activity 
aims,  or  the  standanl  l)y  which  it  is  ju'lge<l,  but  a 
by-product,   as    coal-tar    is   a    by-product  of   the   inanu- 

20 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY  21 

facture  of  gas;  whether  that  by-product  appears  or 
not,  it  is  not  proposed  that  the  rights  themselves  should 
be  abdicated.  For  they  are  regarded,  not  as  a  con- 
ditional trust,  but  as  a  property,  which  may,  indeed, 
give  way  to  the  special  exigencies  of  extraordinary 
emergencies,  but  which  resumes  its  sway  when  the 
emergency  is  over,  and  in  normal  times  is  above  dis- 
cussion. 

That  conception  is  written  large  over  the  history 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  both  in  England  and  in 
America.  The  doctrine  which  it  inherited  was  that 
property  was  held  by  an  absolute  right  on  an  in- 
dividual basis,  and  to  this  fundamental  it  added  an- 
other, which  can  be  traced  in  principle  far  back  into 
history,  but  which  grew  to  its  full  stature  only  after 
the  rise  of  capitalist  industry,  that  societies  act  both  ,  ^ 
unfairly  and  unwisely  when  they  limit  opportunities 
of  economic  enterprise.  Hence  every  attempt  to  im- 
pose obligations  as  a  condition  of  the  tenure  of  prop- 
erty or  of  the  exercise  of  economic  activity  has  been 
met  by  uncompromising  resistance.  The  story  of  the 
struggle  between  humanitarian  sentiment  and  the  the- 
ory of  property  transmitted  from  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury is  familiar.  No  one  has  forgotten  the  opposi- 
tion offered  in  the  name  of  the  rights  of  property  to 
factory  legislation,  to  housing  reform,  to  interference 
with  the  adulteration  of  goods,  even  to  the  compulsory 
sanitation  of  private  houses.  *'  May  I  not  do  what  I 
like  with  my  ovni  ?  "  was  the  answer  to  the  proposal 
to  require  a  minimum  standard  of  safety  and  sanita- 
tion from  the  owners  of  mills  and  houses.     Even  to 


22  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

this  day,  while  an  English  urban  landlord  can  cramp 
or  distort  the  development  of  a  whole  city  by  with- 
holding land  except  at  fancy  prices,  English  munici- 
palities are  without  adequate  powers  of  compulsory 
purchase,  and  must  either  pay  through  the  nose  or 
see  thousands  of  their  members  overcrowded.  The 
whole  body  of  procedure  by  which  they  may  acquire 
land,  or  indeed  new  powers  of  any  kind,  has  been 
carefully  designed  by  lawyers  to  protect  owners  of 
property  against  the  possibility  that  their  private 
rights  may  be  subordinated  to  the  public  interest, 
because  their  rights  are  thought  to  be  primary 
and  absolute  and  pul)lie  interests  secondary  and 
contingent. 

No  one  needs  to  be  reminded,  again,  of  the  influence 
of  the  same  doctrine  in  the  sphere  of  taxation.  Thus 
the  income  tax  was  excused  as  a  temporary  measure, 
because  the  normal  society  was  conceived  to  be  one 
in  which  the  individual  spent  his  whole  income  for 
himself  and  owed  no  obligations  to  society  on  account 
of  it.  The  death  duties  were  denounced  as  robbery, 
because  they  imj)lied  that  the  right  to  benefit  by  in- 
heritance was  conditional  upon  a  social  sanction.  The 
Budget  of  1909  created  a  storm,  not  bc^cause  the  taxa- 
tion of  land  was  heavy — in  amount  the  land-taxes  were 
trifling — but  because  it  was  felt  to  involve  the  doc- 
trine that  property  is  not  an  absolute  right,  but  that 
it  may  proporly  be  accnnipanicd  by  sjieeial  ohligations, 
a  doctrine  which,  if  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion, 
would  destroy  its  sanctity  by  making  ownership  no 
longer  absolute  but   conditional. 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY  23 

Such  an  implication  seems  intolerable  to  an  influ- 
ential body  of  public  opinion,  because  it  has  been  ac- 
customed to  regard  the  free  disposal  of  property  and 
the  unlimited  exploitation  of  economic  opportunities, 
as  rights  which  are  absolute  and  unconditioned.  On 
the  whole,  until  recently,  this  opinion  had  few  antag- 
onists who  could  not  be  ignored.  As  a  consequence 
the  maintenance  of  property  rights  has  not  been  seri- 
iously  threatened  even  in  those  cases  in  which  it  is 
evident  that  no  service  is  discharged,  directly  or  in- 
directly, by  their  exercise.  No  one  supposes,  that  the 
owner  of  urban  land,  performs  qua  owner,  any  func- 
tion. He  has  a  right  of  private  taxation;  that  is  all. 
But  the  private  ownership  of  urban  land  is  as  secure 
to-day  as  it  was  a  century  ago;  and  Lord  Hugh  Cecil, 
in  his  interesting  little  book  on  Conservatism,  declares 
that  whether  private  property  is  mischievous  or  not, 
society  cannot  interfere  with  it,  because  to  interfere 
with  it  is  theft,  and  theft  is  wicked.  No  one  sup- 
poses that  it  is  for  the  public  good  that  large  areas 
of  land  should  be  used  for  parks  and  game.  But  our 
country  gentlemen  are  still  settled  heavily  upon  their 
villages  and  still  slay  their  thousands.  No  one  can 
argue  that  a  monopolist  is  impelled  by  "  an  invisible 
hand  "  to  serve  the  public  interest.  But  over  a  con- 
siderable field  of  industry  competition,  as  the  recent 
Report  on  Trusts  shows,  has  been  replaced  by  com- 
bination, and  combinations  are  allowed  the  same  un- 
fettered freedom  as  individuals  in  the  exploitation  of 
economic  opportunities.  No  one  really  believes  that 
the  production  of  coal  depends  upon  the  payment  of 


24  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

raining  royalties  or  that  ships  will  not  go  to  and  fro 
unless  ship-owners  can  earn  fifty  per  cent,  upon  their 
capital.  But  coal  mines,  or  rather  the  coal  miner,  still 
pay  royalties,  and  ship-owners  still  make  fortunes  and 
are  made  Peers. 

At  the  very  moment  when  everybody  is  talking  about 
the  importance  of  increasing  the  output  of  wealth,  the 
last  question,  apparently,  which  it  occurs  to  any  states- 
man to  ask  is  why  wealth  should  bo  squandered  on 
futile  activities,  and  in  expenditure  which  is  either 
disproportionate  to  service  or  made  for  no  service  at 
all.  So  inveterate,  indeed,  has  become  the  practice 
of  payment  in  virtue  of  property  rights,  without  even 
the  ])rcteiise  of  any  service  being  rendered,  that  wlien, 
in  a  national  emergency,  it  is  proposed  to  extract  oil 
from  the  ground,  the  Government  actually  proix.scs 
that  every  gallon  shall  pay  a  tax  to  landowners  who 
never  even  suspected  its  existence,  and  the  ingenuous 
proprietors  are  full  of  pained  astonishment  at  any  one 
questioning  whether  tlie  nation  is  under  moral  obliga- 
tion to  endow  them  further.  Such  rights  are,  strictly 
speaking,  privileges.  For  the  definition  of  a  priv- 
ilege is  a  right  to  which  no  corresponding  function  is 
attached. 

The  enjoyment  of  proiKTty  and  the  direction  of  in- 
dustry are  considered,  in  short,  to  rcH]uire  no  social 
justification,  because  they  are  regarded  as  rights  which 
stand  by  their  own  virtue,  not  functions  to  be  judged 
by  the  success  with  which  they  contribute  to  a  social 
purpose.  To-day  that  doctrine,  if  intellectually  dis- 
credited,  is  still   tli«'   yiractieal   fuundation  of  social  or- 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY  25 

ganlzation.  How  slowly  it  yields  even  to  the  most 
insistent  demonstration  of  its  inadequacy  is  shown  by 
the  attitude  which  the  heads  of  the  business  world 
have  adopted  to  the  restrictions  imposed  on  economic 
activity  during  the  war.  The  control  of  railways, 
mines  and  shipping,  the  distribution  of  raw  materials 
through  a  public  department  instead  of  through  com- 
peting merchants,  the  regulation  of  prices,  the  attempts 
to  check  "  profiteering  " — the  detailed  application  of 
these  measures  may  have  been  effective  or  ineffective, 
wise  or  injudicious.  It  is  evident,  indeed,  that  some 
of  them  have  been  foolish,  like  the  restriction  of  im- 
ports when  the  world  has  five  years'  destruction  to 
repair,  and  that  others,  if  sound  in  conception,  have 
been  questionable  in  their  execution.  If  they  were 
attacked  on  the  ground  that  they  obstruct  the  efficient 
performance  of  function — if  the  leaders  of  industry 
came  forward  and  said  generally,  as  some,  to  their 
honor,  have : — "  We  accept  your  policy,  but  we  will 
improve  its  execution;  we  desire  payment  for  service 
and  service  only  and  will  help  the  state  to  see  that 
it  pays  for  nothing  else  " — there  might  be  controversy 
as  to  the  facts,  but  there  could  be  none  as  to  the  prin- 
ciple. 

In  reality,  however,  the  gravamen  of  the  charges 
brought  against  these  restrictions  appears  generally  to 
be  precisely  the  opposite.  They  are  denounced  by 
most  of  their  critics  not  because  they  limit  the  oppor- 
tunity of  service,  but  because  they  diminish  the  op- 
portunity for  gain,  not  because  they  prevent  the  trader 
enriching  the  community^   but  because  they   make  it 


26  THi:  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

more  difficult  for  him  to  enrich  himself;  not,  in  short, 
because  they  have  failed  to  convert  economic  activity 
into  a  social  function,  but  because  they  have  come  too 
near  succeeding.  If  the  financial  adviser  to  the  Coal 
Controller  may  be  trusted,  the  shareholders  in  coal 
mines  would  appear  to  have  done  fairly  well  during 
the  war.  But  the  proposal  to  limit  their  profits  to 
1/2  per  ton  is  described  by  Lord  Gainford  as  ''  sheer 
robbery  and  confiscation."  \Vith  some  honorable 
exceptions,  what  is  demanded  is  that  in  the  future 
as  in  the  past  the  directors  of  industry  should  be  free 
to  handle  it  as  an  enterprise  conducted  for  their  own 
convenience  or  advancement,  instead  of  being  com- 
pelled, as  they  have  been  partially  compelled  during 
the  war,  to  subordinate  it  to  a  social  purpose.  For  to 
admit  that  the  criterion  of  commerce  and  industry 
is  its  success  in  discharging  a  social  purpose  is  at 
once  to  turn  property  and  economic  activity  from 
rights  which  arc  absolute  into  rights  which  are  con- 
tingent and  derivative,  because  it  is  to  affirm  that  they 
are  relative  to  functions  and  that  they  may  justly  be 
revoked  when  the  functions  are  not  performed.  It  is, 
in  short,  to  imply  that  property  and  economic  activity 
exist  to  promote  the  ends  of  society,  whereas  hitherto 
society  has  been  regarded  in  the  world  of  business 
as  existing  to  promote  them.  To  those  who  hold  their 
position,  not  as  functionaries,  but  by  virtue  of  their 
.success  in  making  industry  contribute  to  their  own 
wealth  and  social  influence,  such  a  reversal  of  means 
and  ends  appears  little  less  than  a  revolution.  For  it 
means  that  they  must  justify  before  a  social  tribunal 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY  27 

rights  which  they  have  hitherto  taken  for  granted  as 
part  of  an  order  which  is  above  criticism. 

During  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  significance  of  the  opposition  between  the  two  prin- 
ciples of  individual  rights  and  social  functions  was 
masked  by  the  doctrine  of  the  inevitable  harmony  be- 
tween private  interests  and  public  good.  Competition, 
it  was  argued,  was  an  effective  substitute  for  hon- 
esty. To-day  that  subsidiary  doctrine  has  fallen  to 
pieces  under  criticism;  few  now  would  profess  adher- 
ence to  the  compound  of  economic  optimism  and  moral 
bankruptcy  which  led  a  nineteenth  century  economist 
to  say :  "  Greed  is  held  in  check  by  greed,  and  the 
desire  for  gain  sets  limits  to  itself."  The  disposi- 
tion to  regard  individual  rights  as  the  center  and  pivot 
of  society  is  still,  however^  the  most  powerful  element 
in  political  thought  and  the  practical  foundation  of 
industrial  organization.  The  laborious  refutation  of 
the  doctrine  that  private  and  public  interests  are  co- 
incident, and  that  man's  self-love  is  God's  Providence, 
which  was  the  excuse  of  the  last  century  for  its  wor- 
ship of  economic  egotism,  has  achieved,  in  fact,  sur- 
prisingly small  results.  Economic  egotism  is  still  wor- 
shiped; and  it  is  worshiped  because  that  doctrine 
was  not  really  the  center  of  the  position.  It  was  an 
outwork,  not  the  citadel,  and  now  that  the  outwork 
has  been  captured,  the  citadel  is  still  to  win. 

What  gives  its  special  quality  and  character,  its 
toughness  and  cohesion,  to  the  industrial  system  built 
up  in  the  last  century  and  a  half,  is  not  its  exploded 
theory  of  economic  harmonies.     It  is  the  doctrine  that 


28  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

economic  rights  are  anterior  to,  and  independent  of 
economic  functions,  that  they  stand  hy  their  own  vir- 
tue, and  need  adduce  no  higher  credentials.  The  prac- 
tical result  of  it  is  that  economic  rights  remain, 
whether  economic  functions  are  performed  or  not.  They 
remain  to-day  in  a  more  menacing  form  than  in  the 
ago  of  early  industrialism.  For  those  who  control  in- 
dustry no  longer  compete  but  combine,  and  the  rivalry 
between  property  in  capital  and  property  in  land  has 
long  since  ended.  The  basis  of  the  New  Conservatism 
app<*ars  to  be  a  determination  so  to  organize  societ", 
both  by  jiolitical  and  economic  action,  as  to  make  it 
secure  against  every  attempt  to  extinguish  payments 
which  are  made,  not  for  service,  but  because  the  own- 
ers possess  a  right  to  extract  income  without  it.  Hence 
the  fusion  of  the  two  traditional  parties,  the  proposed 
"  strengthening  "  of  the  second  chamber,  the  return  to 
protection,  the  swift  conversion  of  rival  industrialists 
to  the  advantages  of  monopoly,  and  the  attempts  to  h\ 
off  with  concessions  the  more  influential  section  of  the 
working  classes.  Revolutions,  as  a  long  and  bitter  ex- 
perience reveals,  arc  aj)t  to  take  their  color  from  the 
regime  which  tiiey  overthrow.  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
the  creed  which  affirms  the  absolute  rights  of  property 
should  sometimes  be  met  with  a  counter-affirmation  of 
the  absolute  rights  of  lalwr,  less  anti-social,  indeed,  and 
inhuman,  but  almomst  as  dogmatic,  almost  as  intoler- 
ant and  thoughtless  as  itself? 

A  society  which  aimed  at  making  the  acquisition  of 
wealth  contingent  u[)oii  the  discharge  of  social  obliga- 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY  29 

tions,  which  sought  to  proportion  remuneration  to  serv- 
ice and  denied  it  to  those  by  whom  no  service  was  per- 
formed, which  inquired  first  not  what  men  possess  but 
what  they  can  make  or  create  or  achieve,  might  be 
called  a  Functional  Society,  because  in  such  a  society 
the  main  subject  of  social  emphasis  would  be  the  per- 
formance of  functions.  But  such  a  society  does  not 
exist,  even  as  a  remote  ideal,  in  the  modern  world, 
though  something  like  it  has  hung,  an  unrealized  the- 
ory, before  men's  minds  in  the  past.  Modern  societies 
iMn  at  protecting  economic  rights,  while  leaving  eco- 
nomic functions,  except  in  moments  of  abnormal  emer- 
gency, to  fulfil  themselves.  The  motive  which  gives 
color  and  quality  to  their  public  institutions,  to  their 
policy  and  political  thought,  is  not  the  attempt  to 
secure  the  fulfilment  of  tasks  undertaken  for  the  pub- 
lic service,  but  to  increase  the  opportunities  open  to 
individuals  of  attaining  the  objects  which  they  conceive 
c^%e  advantageous  to  themselves.  If  asked  the  end  or 
criterion  of  social  organization,  they  would  give  an  an- 
swer reminiscent  of  the  formula  the  greatest  happiness 
of  the  greatest  number.  But  to  say  that  the  end  of 
social  institutions  is  happiness,  is  to  say  that  they 
have  no  common  end  at  all.  For  happiness  is  in- 
dividual, and  to  make  happiness  the  object  of  society 
is  to  resolve  society  itself  into  the  ambitions  of  num- 
berless individuals,  each  directed  towards  the  attain- 
ment of  some  personal  purpose. 

Such  societies  may  be  called  Acquisitive  Societies, 
because  their  whole  tendency  and  interest  and  pre- 
occupation is  to  promote  the  acquisition  of  wealth.    The 


30  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

appeal  of  this  conception  must  be  powerful,  for  it  has 
laid  the  whole  modern  world  under  its  spell.  Since 
England  first  revealed  the  possibilities  of  industrial- 
ism, it  has  gone  from  strength  to  strength,  and  as  in- 
dustrial civilization  invades  countries  hitherto  remote 
from  it,  as  Russia  and  Japan  and  India  and  China 
are  drawn  into  its  orbit,  each  decade  sees  a  fresh  ex- 
tension of  its  influence.  The  secret  of  its  triumph 
is  obvious.  It  is  an  invitation  to  men  to  use  the  pow- 
ers with  which  they  have  been  endowed  by  nature  or 
society,  by  skill  or  energy  or  relentless  egotism  or  mere 
good  fortune,  without  inquiring  whether  there  is  any 
principle  by  which  their  exercise  should  be  limited. 
It  assumes  the  social  organization  which  determines 
the  opportunities  which  different  classes  shall  in  fact 
possess,  and  concentrates  attention  upon  the  right  of 
those  who  possess  or  can  acquire  power  to  make  the 
fullest  use  of  it  for  their  own  self-advancement.  By 
fixing  men's  minds,  not  upon  the  discharge  of  social 
obligations,  which  restricts  their  energy,  because  it  de- 
fines the  goal  to  which  it  should  be  directed,  but  upon 
the  exercise  of  the  right  to  pursue  their  own  self- 
interest,  it  offers  unlimited  scope  for  the  acquisition 
of  riches,  and  therefore  gives  free  play  to  one  of  the 
most  powerful  of  human  instincts.  To  the  strong  it 
promises  unfettered  freedom  for  the  exercise  of  their 
strength ;  to  the  weak  the  hope  that  they  too  one  day 
may  be  strong.  Before  the  eyes  of  both  it  suspends  a 
golden  prize,  which  not  all  can  attain,  but  for  which 
each  may  strive,  the  enchanting  vision  of  infinite  ex- 
pansion.    It  assures  men  that  there  are  no  ends  other 


THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY  31 

than  their  ends,  no  law  other  than  their  desires,  no 
limit  other  than  that  which  they  think  advisable.  Thus 
it  makes  the  individual  the  center  of  his  own  universe, 
and  dissolves  moral  principles  into  a  choice  of  ex- 
pediences. And  it  immensely  simplifies  the  problems 
of  social  life  in  complex  communities.  For  it  relieves 
them  of  the  necessity  of  discriminating  between  dif- 
ferent types  of  economic  activity  and  different  sources 
of  wealth,  between  enterprise  and  avarice,  energy  and 
unscrupulous  greed,  property  which  is  legitimate  and 
property  which  is  theft,  the  just  enjoyment  of  the 
fruits  of  labor  and  the  idle  parasitism  of  birth  or  for- 
tune, because  it  treats  all  economic  activities  as  stand- 
ing upon  the  same*  level,  and  suggests  that  excess  or 
defect,  waste  or  superfluity,  require  no  conscious  ef- 
fort of  the  social  will  to  avert  them,  but  are  corrected 
almost  automatically  by  the  mechanical  play  of  eco- 
nomic forces. 

Under  the  impulse  of  such  ideas  men  do  not  be- 
come religious  or  wise  or  artistic;  for  religion  and 
wisdom  and  art  imply  the  acceptance  of  limitations. 
But  they  become  powerful  and  rich.  They  inherit  the 
earth  and  change  the  face  of  nature,  if  they  do  not 
possess  their  own  souls;  and  they  have  that  appear- 
ance of  freedom  which  consists  in  the  absence  of  ob- 
stacles between  opportunities  for  self-advancement  and 
those  ^hom  birth  or  wealth  or  talent  or  good  fortune 
has  placed  in  a  position  to  seize  them.  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult either  for  individuals  or  for  societies  to  achieve 
their  object,  if  that  object  be  sufficiently  limited  and 
immediate,   and   if  they   are   not  distracted  from   its 


32  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

pursuit  by  other  considerations.  The  temper  which 
dedicates  itself  to  the  cultivation  of  opportunities,  and 
leaves  obligations  to  take  care  of  themselves,  is  set  upon 
an  object  which  is  at  once  simple  and  practicable.  The 
eighteenth  century  defined  it.  The  twentieth  century 
has  very  largely  attained  it.  Or,  if  it  has  not  attained 
it,  it  has  at  least  grasped  the  possibilities  of  its  attain- 
ment. The  national  output  of  wealth  per  head  of 
population  is  estimated  to  have  been  approximately  $200 
in  1914.  Unless  mankind  chooses  to  continue  the  sac- 
rifice of  prosperity  to  the  ambitions  and  terrors  of 
nationalism,  it  is  possible  that  by  the  year  2000  it  may 
be  doubled. 


IV 

THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM 

Such  happiness  is  not  remote  from  achievement.  Ih 
the  course  of  achieving  it,  however,  the  world  has  been 
confronted  by  a  group  of  unexpected  consequences, 
which  are  the  cause  of  its  malaise,  as  the  obstruction 
of  economic  opportunity  was  the  cause  of  social  malaise 
in  the  eighteenth  century.  And  these  consequences  are 
not,  as  is  often  suggested,  accidental  mal-adjustments, 
but  flow  naturally  from  its  dominant  principle :  so  that 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  cause  of  its  perplexity 
is  not  its  failure,  but  the  quality  of  its  success,  and 
its  light  itself  a  kind  of  darkness.  The  will  to  economic 
power,  if  it  is  sufficiently  single-minded,  brings  riches. 
But  if  it  is  single-minded  it  destroys  the  moral  re- 
straints which  ought  to  condition  the  pursuit  of  riches, 
and  therefore  also  makes  the  pursuit  of  riches  mean- 
ingless. For  what  gives  meaning  to  economic  activity, 
as  to  any  other  activity  is,  as  we  have  said,  the  pur- 
pose to  which  it  is  directed.  But  the  faith  upon  which 
our  economic  civilization  reposes,  the  faith  that  riches 
are  not  a  means  but  an  end,  implies  that  all  economic 
activity  is  equally  estimable,  whether  it  is  subordinated 
to  a  social  purpose  or  not.  Hence  it  divorces  gain  from 
service,  and  justifies  rewards  for  which  no  function  is 
performed,  or  which  are  out  of  all  proportion  to  it. 

Wealth  in  modern  societies  is  distributed  according  to 

33 


34  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

opportunity;  and  while  opportunity  depends  partly 
upon  talent  and  energy,  it  depends  still  more  upon 
birth,  social  position,  access  to  education  and  inherited 
wealth;  in  a  word,  upon  property.  For  talent  and 
energy  can  create  opportunity.  But  property  need  only 
wait  for  it.  It  is  the  sleeping  partner  who  draws  the 
dividends  which  the  firm  produces,  the  residuary  lega- 
tee who  always  claims  his  share  in  the  estate. 

Because  rewards  are  divorced  from  services,  so  that 
what  is  prized  most  is  not  riches  obtained  in  return 
for  labor  but  riches  the  economic  origin  of  which,  being 
regarded  as  sordid,  is  concealed,  two  results  follow. 
The  first  is  the  creation  of  a  class  of  pensioners  upon 
industry,  who  levy  toll  upon  its  product,  but  contribute 
nothing  to  its  increase,  and  who  are  not  merely  tol- 
erated, but  applauded  and  admired  and  protected  with 
assiduous  care,  as  though  the  secret  of  prosperity  re- 
sided in  them.  They  are  admired  because  in  the  ab- 
sence of  any  principle  of  discrimination  between  in- 
comes which  are  payment  for  functions  and  incomes 
which  are  not,  all  incomes,  merely  because  they  rep- 
resent wealth,  stand  on  the  same  level  of  appreciation, 
and  are  estimated  solely  by  their  magnitude,  so  that 
in  all  societies  which  have  accepted  industrialism  there 
is  an  upper  layer  which  claims  the  enjoyment  of  social 
life,  while  it  repudiates  its  responsibilities.  The  ren- 
tier and  his  ways,  how  familiar  they  were  in  England 
before  the  war!  A  public  school  and  then  club  life 
in  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  then  another  club  in 
town ;  London  in  June,  when  London  is  pleasant,  the 
moors  in  August,  and  pheasants  in  October,  Cannes  in 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         35 

December  and  hunting  in  February  and  March;  and 
a  whole  world  of  rising  bourgeoisie  eager  to  imitate 
them,  sedulous  to  make  their  expensive  watches  keep 
time  with  this  preposterous  calendar! 

The  second  consequence  is  the  degradation  of  those 
who  labor,  but  who  do  not  by  their  labor  command 
large  rewards;  that  is  of  the  great  majority  of  man- 
kind. And  this  degradation  follows  inevitably  from 
the  refusal  of  men  to  give  the  purpose  of  industry 
the  first  place  in  their  thought  about  it.  When  they 
do  that,  when  their  minds  are  set  upon  the  fact  that 
the  meaning  of  industry  is  the  service  of  man,  all  who 
labor  appear  to  them  honorable,  because  all  who  labor 
serve,  and  the  distinction  which  separates  those  who 
serve  from  those  who  merely  spend  is  so  crucial  and 
fundamental  as  to  obliterate  all  minor  distinctions 
based  on  differences  of  income.  But  when  the  cri- 
terion of  function  is  forgotten,  the  only  criterion  which 
remains  is  that  of  wealth,  and  an  Acquisitive  Society 
reverences  the  possession  of  wealth,  as  a  Functional 
Society  would  honor,  even  in  the  person  of  the  hum- 
blest and  most  laborious  craftsman,  the  arts  of 
creation.  » 

So  wealth  becomes  the  foundation  of  public  esteem, 
and  the  mass  of  men  who  labor,  but  who  do  not  ac- 
quire wealth,  are  thought  to  be  vulgar  and  meaning- 
less and  insignificant  compared  with  the  few  who  ac- 
quire wealth  by  good  fortune,  or  by  the  skilful  use  of 
economic  opportunities.  They  come  to  be  regarded, 
not  as  the  ends  for  which  alone  it  is  worth  while  to 
produce  wealth  at  all,  but  as  the  instruments  of  its 


36  THE  ACQUISITIVE  S0CII:TY 

acquisition  by  a  world  that  declines  to  be  8oiled  by  con- 
tact with  what  is  thought  to  be  the  dull  and  sordid 
business  of  labor.  They  are  not  happy,  for  the  reward 
of  all  but  the  very  mean  is  not  merely  money,  but  the 
esteem  of  their  fellow-men,  and  they  know  they  are  not 
esteemed,  as  soldiers,  for  example,  arc  esteemed,  though 
it  is  because  they  give  their  lives  to  making  civiliza- 
tion that  there  is  a  civilization  which  it  is  worth  while 
for  soldiers  to  defend.  They  are  not  esteemed,  be- 
cause the  admiration  of  society  is  directed  towards 
those  who  get,  not  towards  those  who  give;  and  though 
workmen  give  much  they  get  little.  And  the  rentiers 
whom  they  support  are  not  happy;  for  in  discarding 
the  idea  of  function,  which  sets  a  limit  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  riches,  they  have  also  discarded  the  principle 
which  alone  give  riches  their  meaning.  Hence  unless 
they  can  persuade  themselves  that  to  be  rich  is  in  it- 
self meritorious,  they  may  bask  in  social  admiration, 
but  they  arc  unable  to  esteem  themselves.  For  they 
have  abolished  the  principle  which  makes  activity  sig- 
nificant, and  therefore  estimable.  They  are,  indeed, 
more  truly  pitiable  than  some  of  those  who  envy  them. 
For  like  the  spirits  in  the  Inferno,  they  are  punished 
by  the  attainment  of  their  desires. 

A  society  ruled  by  these  notions  is  necessarily  the 
victim  of  an  irrational  inequality.  To  escape  such  in- 
equality it  is  necessary  to  recognize  that  there  is  some 
principle  which  ought  to  limit  the  gains  of  particular 
classes  and  particular  individuals,  because  gains  drawn 
from  certain  sources  or  exceeding  certain  amounts  are 
iUegitimate.      But  such   a  limitation   implies  a  stand- 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         37 

ard  of  discrimination,  which  is  inconsistent  with  the 
assumption  that  each  man  has  a  right  to  what  he  can 
get,  irrespective  of  any  service  rendered  for  it.  Thus 
privilege,  which  was  to  have  been  exorcised  by  the  gos- 
pel of  1789,  returns  in  a  new  guise,  the  creature  no 
longer  of  unequal  legal  rights  thwarting  the  natural 
exercise  of  equal  powers  of  hand  and  brain,  but  of 
unequal  powers  springing  from  the  exercise  of  equal 
rights  in  a  world  where  property  and  inherited  wealth 
and  the  apparatus  of  class  institutions  have  made  op- 
portunities unequal.  Inequality,  again,  leads  to  the 
mis-direction  of  production.  For,  since  the  demand  of 
one  income  of  £50,000  is  as  powerful  a  magnet  as  the 
demand  of  500  incomes  of  £100,  it  diverts  energy  from 
the  creation  of  wealth  to  the  multiplication  of  luxuries, 
so  that,  for  example,  while  one-tenth  of  the  people  of 
England  are  overcrowded^  a  considerable  part  of  them 
are  engaged,  not  in  supplying  that  deficiency,  but  in 
making  rich  men's  hotels,  luxurious  yachts,  and  motor- 
cars like  that  used  by  the  Secretary  of  State  for  War, 
"  with  an  interior  inlaid  with  silver  in  quartered  ma- 
hogany, and  upholstered  in  fawn  suede  and  morocco," 
which  was  recently  bought  by  a  suburban  capitalist,  by 
way  of  encouraging  useful  industries  and  rebuking  pub- 
lic extravagance  with  an  example  of  private  economy, 
for  the  trifling  sum  of  $14,000. 

Thus  part  of  the  goods  which  are  annually  produced, 
and  which  are  called  wealth,  is,  strictly  speaking,  waste, 
because  it  consists  of  articles  which,  though  reckoned 
as  part  of  the  income  of  the  nation,  either  should  not 
have  been  produced  until  other  articles   had   already 


38  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

been  produced  in  sufficient  abundance,  or  should  not 
bave  been  produced  at  all.  And  some  part  of  the  popu- 
lation is  employed  in  making  goods  which  no  man  can 
make  with  happiness,  or  indeed  without  loss  of  self- 
respect,  because  he  knows  that  they  had  much  better 
not  be  made,  and  that  his  life  is  wasted  in  making  them. 
Everybody  recognizes  that  the  army  contractor  who, 
in  time  of  war,  set  several  hundred  navvies  to  dig  an 
artificial  lake  in  bis  grounds,  was  not  adding  to,  but 
subtracting  from,  the  wealth  of  the  nation.  But  in 
time  of  peace  many  hundred  thousand  workmen,  if  they 
are  not  digging  ponds,  are  doing  work  which  is  equally 
foolish  and  wasteful ;  though,  in  peace,  as  in  war,  there 
is  important  work,  which  is  waiting  to  be  done,  and 
which  is  neglected.  It  is  neglected  because,  while  the 
effective  demand  of  the  mass  of  men  is  only  too  small, 
there  is  a  small  class  which  wears  several  men's  clothes, 
eats  several  men's  dinners,  occupies  several  families' 
houses,  and  lives  several  men's  lives.  As  long  as  a 
minority  has  so  large  an  income  that  part  of  it,  if  spent 
at  all,  must  be  spent  on  trivialties,  so  long  will  part 
of  the  human  energy  and  mechanical  equipment  of  the 
nation  be  diverted  from  serious  work,  which  enriches 
it,  to  making  trivialities,  which  impoverishes  it,  since 
they  can  only  be  made  at  the  cost  of  not  making  other 
things.  And  if  the  peers  and  millionaires  who  are  now 
preaching  the  duty  of  production  to  miners  and  dock 
laborers  desire  that  more  wealth,  not  more  waste,  should 
be  produced,  the  simplest  way  in  which  they  can  achieve 
their  aim  is  to  transfer  to  the  public  their  whole  in- 
comes over  (say)  $5,000  a  year,  in  order  that  it  may 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         39 

be  spent  in  setting  to  work,  not  gardeners,  chauffeurs, 
domestic  servants  and  shopkeepers  in  the  West  End  of 
London,  but  builders,  mechanics  and  teachers. 

So  to  those  who  clamor,  as  many  now  do,  "  Produce ! 
Produce !  "  one  simple  question  may  be  addressed : — 
"  Produce  what  ?  "  Food,  clothing,  house-room,  art, 
knowledge?  By  all  means!  But  if  the  nation  is 
scantily  furnished  with  these  things  had  it  not  better 
stop  producing  a  good  many  others  which  fill  shop 
windows  in  Regent  Street?  If  it  desires  to  re-equip 
its  industries  with  machinery  and  its  railways  with 
wagons,  had  it  not  better  refrain  from  holding  ex- 
hibitions designed  to  encourage  rich  men  to  re-equip 
themselves  with  motor-cars?  What  can  be  more  child- 
ish than  to  urge  the  necessity  that  productive  power 
should  be  increased,  if  part  of  the  productive  power 
which  exists  already  is  misapplied?  Is  not  less  pro- 
duction of  futilities  as  important  as,  indeed  a  condi- 
tion of,  more  production  of  things  of  moment  ?  Would 
not  "  Spend  less  on  private  luxuries  "  be  as  wise  a 
cry  as  "  produce  more  "  ?  Yet  this  result  of  inequal- 
ity, again,  is  a  phenomenon  which  cannot  be  prevented, 
or  checked,  or  even  recognized  by  a  society  which  ex- 
cludes the  idea  of  purpose  from  its  social  arrange- 
ments and  industrial  activity.  For  to  recognize  it  is 
to  admit  that  there  is  a  principle  superior  to  the 
mechanical  play  of  economic  forces,  which  ought  to 
determine  the  relative  importance  of  different  occu- 
pations, and  thus  to  abandon  the  view  that  all  riches, 
however  composed,  are  an  end,  and  that  aU  economic 
activity  is  equally  justifiable. 


40  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

The  rejection  of  the  idea  of  purpose  involves  an- 
other consequence  which  every  one  laments,  but  which 
no  one  can  prevent,  except  by  abandoning  the  belief 
that  the  free  exercise  of  rights  is  the  main  interest  of 
society  and  the  discharge  of  obligations  a  secondary 
and  incidental  consequence  which  may  be  left  to  take 
care  of  itself.  It  is  that  social  life  is  turned  into  a 
scene  of  fierce  antagonisms  and  that  a  considerable  part 
of  industry  is  carried  on  in  the  intervals  of  a  disguised 
social  war.  The  idea  that  industrial  peace  can  be 
secured  merely  by  the  exercise  of  tact  and  forbear- 
ance is  based  on  the  idea  that  there  is  a  fundamental 
identity  of  interest  between  the  different  groups  en- 
gaged in  it,  which  is  occasionally  interrupted  by  re- 
grettable misunderstandings.  Both  the  one  idea  and 
the  other  arc  an  illusion.  The  disputes  which  matter 
are  not  caused  by  a  misunderstanding  of  identity  of 
interests,  but  by  a  better  understanding  of  diversity 
of  interests.  Though  a  formal  declaration  of  war  is 
an  episode,  the  conditions  which  issue  in  a  declaration 
of  war  are  permanent ;  and  what  makes  them  j)er- 
raanent  is  the  conception  of  industry  which  also  makes 
inequality  and  functionlcss  incomes  permanent.  It  is 
the  denial  that  industry  has  any  end  or  purpose  other 
than  the  satisfaction  of  those  engaged  in  it. 

That  motive  produces  industrial  warfare,  not  as  a 
regrettable  incident,  but  as  an  inevitable  result.  It 
produces  industrial  war,  because  its  teaching  is  that 
each  individual  or  group  has  a  right  to  what  they  can 
get,  and  denies  that  there  is  any  principle,  other  than 
the  mechanism  of  the  market,  which  determines  what 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  IXDUSTRIALISM         41 

they  ought  to  get.  For,  since  the  income  available  for 
distribution  is  limited,  and  since,  therefore,  when  cer- 
tain limits  have  been  passed,  what  one  group  gains 
another  group  must  lose,  it  is  evident  that  if  the  rela- 
tive incomes  of  different  groups  are  not  to  be  deter- 
mined by  their  functions,  there  is  no  method  other 
than  mutual  self-assertion  which  is  left  to  determine 
them.  Self-interest,  indeed,  may  cause  them  to  re- 
frain from  using  their  full  strength  to  enforce  their 
claims,  and,  in  so  far  as  this  happens,  peace  is  se- 
cured in  industry,  as  men  have  attempted  to  secure 
it  in  international  affairs,  by  a  balance  of  power.  But 
the  maintenance  of  such  a  peace  is  contingent  upon 
the  estimate  of  the  parties  to  it  that  they  have  more 
to  lose  than  to  gain  by  an  overt  struggle,  and  is  not 
the  result  of  their  acceptance  of  any  standard  of  re- 
muneration as  an  equitable  settlement  of  their  claims. 
Hence  it  is  precarious,  insincere  and  short.  It  is  with- 
out finality,  because  there  can  be  no  finality  in  the 
mere  addition  of  increments  of  income,  any  more  than 
in  the  gratification  of  any  other  desire  for  material 
goods.  When  demands  are  conceded  the  old  strug- 
gle recommences  upon  a  new  level,  and  will  always 
recommence  as  long  as  men  seek  to  end  it  merely  by 
increasing  remuneration,  not  by  finding  a  principle  upon 
which  all  remuneration,  whether  large  or  small,  should 
be  based. 

Such  a  principle  is  offered  by  the  idea  of  function, 
because  its  application  would  eliminate  the  surpluses 
which  are  the  subject  of  contention,  and  would  make 
it   evident  that   remuneration   is   based   upon   service, 


42  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

not  upon  chance  or  privilege  or  the  power  to  use  op- 
portunities to  drive  a  hard  bargain.  But  the  idea  of 
function  is  incompatible  with  the  doctrine  that  every 
person  and  organization  have  an  unlimited  right  to  ex- 
ploit their  economic  opportunities  as  fully  as  they 
please,  which  is  the  working  faith  of  modern  industry ; 
and,  since  it  is  not  accepted,  men  resign  themselves 
to  the  settlement  of  the  issue  by  force,  or  propose  that 
the  State  should  supersede  the  force  of  private  associa- 
tions by  the  use  of  its  force,  as  though  the  absence 
of  a  principle  could  be  compensated  by  a  new  kind 
of  machinery.  Yet  all  the  time  the  true  cause  of  in- 
dustrial warfare  is  as  simple  as  the  true  cause  of  inter- 
national warfare.  It  is  that  if  men  recognize  no  law 
superior  to  their  desires,  then  they  must  fight  when 
their  desires  collide.  For  though  groups  or  nations 
which  arc  at  issue  with  each  other  may  be  willing  to 
submit  to  a  principle  which  is  superior  to  them  both, 
there  is  no  reason  why  they  should  submit  to  each 
other. 

Hence  the  idea,  which  is  popular  with  rich  men, 
that  industrial  disputes  would  disappear  if  only  the 
output  of  wealth  were  doubled,  and  every  one  were 
twice  as  well  off,  not  only  is  refuted  by  all  practical 
experience,  but  is  in  its  very  nature  founded  upon  an 
illusion.  For  the  question  is  one  not  of  amounts  but 
of  proportions;  and  men  will  fight  to  be  paid  $120  a 
week,  instead  of  $80,  as  readily  as  they  will  fight  to 
be  paid  $20  instead  of  $10,  as  long  as  there  is  no  reason 
why  they  should  be  paid  $80  instead  of  $120,  and  as 
long  as  other  men  who  do  not  work  are  paid  anything 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         43 

at  all.  If  miners  demanded  higher  wages  when  every 
superfluous  charge  upon  coal-getting  had  been  elimi- 
nated, there  would  be  a  principle  with  which  to  meet 
their  claim,  the  principle  that  one  group  of  workers 
ought  not  to  encroach  upon  the  livelihood  of  others. 
But  as  long  as  mineral  owners  extract  royalties,  and 
exceptionally  productive  mines  pay  thirty  per  cent,  to 
absentee  shareholders,  there  is  no  valid  answer  to  a  de- 
mand for  higher  wages.  For  if  the  community  pays 
anything  at  all  to  those  who  do  not  work,  it  can  afford 
to  pay  more  to  those  who  do.  The  naive  complaint,  that 
workmen  are  never  satisfied,  is,  therefore,  strictly  true. 
It  is  true,  not  only  of  workmen,  but  of  all  classes  in 
a  society  which  conducts  its  affairs  on  the  principle 
that  wealth,  instead  of  being  proportioned  to  func- 
tion, belongs  to  those  who  can  get  it.  They  are  never 
satisfied,  nor  can  they  be  satisfied.  For  as  long  as 
they  make  that  principle  the  guide  of  their  individual 
lives  and  of  their  social  order,  nothing  short  of  in- 
finity could  bring  them  satisfaction. 

So  here,  again,  the  prevalent  insistence  upon  rights, 
and  prevalent  neglect  of  functions,  brings  men  into 
a  vicious  circle  which  they  cannot  escape,  without  es- 
caping from  the  false  philosophy  which  dominates  them. 
But  it  does  something  more.  It  makes  that  philosophy 
itself  seem  plausible  and  exhilarating,  and  a  rule  not 
only  for  industry,  in  which  it  had  its  birth,  but  for 
politics  and  culture  and  religion  and  the  whole  com- 
pass of  social  life.  The  possibility  that  one  aspect  of 
human  life  may  be  so  exaggerated  as  to  overshadow* 


44  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

and  in  time  to  atrophy,  every  other,  has  been  made 
familiar  to  Englishmen  by  the  example  of  "  Prussian 
militarism."  Militarism  is  the  characteristic,  not  of 
an  army,  but  of  a  society.  Its  essence  is  not  any  par- 
ticular quality  or  scale  of  military  preparation,  but 
a  state  of  mind,  which,  in  its  concentration  on  one  par- 
ticular element  in  social  life,  ends  finally  by  exalting 
it  until  it  becomes  the  arbiter  of  all  the  rest.  The 
j)urpose  for  which  military  forces  exist  is  forgotten. 
They  are  thought  to  stand  by  their  own  right  and 
to  need  no  justification.  Instead  of  being  regarded 
as  an  instrument  which  is  necessary  in  an  imperfect 
world,  they  are  elevated  into  an  object  of  superstitious 
\eneration,  as  though  the  world  would  be  a  poor  in- 
sipid place  without  them,  so  that  political  institutions 
and  social  arrangements  and  intellect  and  morality  and 
religion  are  crushed  into  a  mold  made  to  fit  one  activity, 
which  in  a  sane  society  is  a  subordinate  activity,  like 
the  police,  or  the  maintenance  of  prisons,  or  the  cleans- 
ing of  sewers,  but  which  in  a  militarist  state  is  a  kind 
of  mystical  epitome  of  society  itself. 

Militarism,  as  Englishmen  see  plainly  enough,  is 
fetich  worship.  It  is  the  prostration  of  men's  souls 
before,  and  the  laceration  of  their  bodies  to  appease, 
an  idol.  What  they  do  not  sec  is  that  their  reverence 
for  economic  activity  and  industry  and  what  is  called 
business  is  also  fetich  worship,  and  that  in  their  devo- 
tion to  that  idol  they  torture  themselves  as  needlessly 
and  indulge  in  the  same  meaningless  antics  as  the  Prus- 
sians did  in  their  worship  of  militarism.  For  what 
th**  military  tradition  and  spirit  have  done  for  Pru-- 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         45 

sia,  with  the  result  of  creating  militarism.,  the  com- 
mercial tradition  and  spirit  have  done  for  England, 
with  the  result  of  creating  industrialism.  Industrial- 
ism is  no  more  a  necessary  characteristic  of  an  econom- 
ically developed  society  than  militarism  is  a  necessary 
characteristic  of  a  nation  which  maintains  military 
forces.  It  is  no  more  the  result  of  applying  science  to 
industry  than  militarism  is  the  result  of  the  applica- 
tion of  science  to  war,  and  the  idea  that  it  is  some- 
thing inevitable  in  a  community  which  uses  coal  and 
iron  and  machinery,  so  far  from  being  the  truth,  is 
itself  a  product  of  the  perversion  of  mind  which  in- 
dustrialism produces.  Men  may  use  what  mechanical 
instruments  they  please  and  be  none  the  worse  for  their 
use.  What  kills  their  souls  is  when  they  allow  their 
instruments  to  use  them.  The  essence  of  industrial- 
ism, in  short,  is  not  any  particular  method  of  indus- 
try, but  a  particular  estimate  of  the  importance  of 
industry,  which  results  in  it  being  thought  the  only 
thing  that  is  important  at  all,  so  that  it  is  elevated 
from  the  subordinate  place  which  it  should  occupy 
among  human  interests  and  activities  into  being  the 
standard  by  which  all  other  interests  and  activities  are 
judged. 

When  a  Cabinet  Minister  declares  that  the  great- 
ness of  this  country  depends  upon  the  volume  of  its 
exports,  so  that  France,  with  exports  comparatively  lit- 
tle, and  Elizabethan  England,  which  exported  next  to 
nothing,  are  presumably  to  be  pitied  as  altogether  in- 
ferior civilizations,  that  is  Industrialism.  It  is  the 
confusion  of  one  minor  department  of  life  with  the 


46  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

whole  of  life.  When  manufacturers  cry  and  cut  them- 
selves with  knives,  because  it  is  proposed  that  boys  and 
girls  of  fourteen  shall  attend  school  for  eight  hours  a 
week,  and  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Education  is 
so  gravely  impressed  by  their  apprehensions,  that  he 
at  once  allows  the  hours  to  be  reduced  to  seven,  that 
is  Industrialism.  It  is  fetich  worship.  When  the  Gov- 
ernment obtains  money  for  a  war,  which  costs  $28,- 
000,000  a  day,  by  closing  the  Museums,  which  cost 
$80,000  a  year,  that  is  Industrialism.  It  is  a  con- 
tempt for  all  interests  which  do  not  contribute  ol> 
viously  to  economic  activity.  When  the  Press  clamors 
that  the  one  thing  needed  to  make  this  island  an  Ar- 
cadia is  productivity,  and  more  productivity,  and  yet 
more  productivity,  that  is  Industrialism.  It  is  the 
confusion  of  means  with  ends. 

Men  will  always  confuse  means  with  ends  if  they 
are  without  any  clear  conception  that  it  is  the  ends, 
not  the  means,  which  matter — if  they  allow  their  minds 
to  slip  from  the  fact  that  it  is  the  social  purpose  of 
industry  which  gives  it  meaning  and  makes  it  worth 
while  to  carry  it  on  at  all.  And  when  they  do  that, 
they  will  turn  their  whole  world  upside  down,  because 
they  do  not  see  the  polos  upon  which  it  ought  tc  move. 
So  when,  like  England,  they  are  thoroughly  industrial- 
ized, they  behave  like  Germany,  which  was  thoroughly 
militarized.  They  talk  as  though  man  existed  for  in- 
dustry, instead  of  industry  existing  for  man,  as  the 
Prussians  talked  of  man  existing  for  war.  They  re- 
sent any  activity  which  is  not  colored  by  the  predom- 
inant interest,  because  it  seems  a  rival  to  it.     So  they 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         47 

destroy  religion  and  art  and  morality,  which  cannot 
exist  unless  they  are  disinterested;  and  having  de- 
stroyed these,  which  are  the  end,  for  the  sake  of  in- 
dustry, which  is  a  means,  they  make  their  industry 
itself  what  they  make  their  cities,  a  desert  of  unnat- 
ural dreariness,  which  only  forgetfulness  can  make  en- 
durable, and  which  only  excitement  can  enable  them 
to  forget. 

Torn  by  suspicions  and  recriminations,  avid  of 
power,  and  oblivious  of  duties,  desiring  peace,  but  un- 
able to  "  seek  peace  and  ensue  it,"  because  unwilling 
to  surrender  the  creed  which  is  the  cause  of  war,  to 
what  can  one  compare  such  a  society  but  to  the  inter- 
national world,  which  also  has  been  called  a  society 
and  which  also  is  social  in  nothing  but  name?  And 
the  comparison  is  more  than  a  play  upon  words.  It 
is  an  analogy  which  has  its  roots  in  the  facts  of  his- 
tory. It  is  not  a  chance  that  the  last  two  centuries, 
which  saw  the  new  growth  of  a  new  system  of  indus- 
try, saw  also  the  growth  of  the  system  of  international 
politics  which  came  to  a  climax  in  the  period  from 
1870  to  1914.  Both  the  one  and  the  other  are  the 
expression  of  the  same  spirit  and  move  in  obedience 
to  similar  laws.  The  essence  of  the  former  was  the 
repudiation  of  any  authority  superior  to  the  individual 
reason.  It  left  men  free  to  follow  their  own  inter- 
ests or  ambitions  or  appetites,  untrammeled  by  subor- 
dination to  any  common  center  of  allegiance.  The  es- 
sence of  the  latter  was  the  repudiation  of  any  au- 
thority superior  to  the  sovereign  state,  which  again  was 
conceived   as   a   compact   self-contained   unit — a    unit 


48  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

which  would  lose  its  very  essence  if  it  lost  its  inde- 
pendence of  other  states.  Just  as  the  one  emancipated 
economic  activity  from  a  mesh  of  antiquated  tradi- 
tions, so  the  other  emancipated  nations  from  arbitrary 
subordination  to  alien  races  or  Governments,  and  turned 
them  into  nationalities  with  a  right  to  work  out  their 
own  destiny. 

Nationalism  is,  in  fact,  the  counterpart  among  na- 
tions of  what  individualism  is  within  them.  It  has 
similar  origins  and  tendencies,  similar  triumphs  and 
defects.  For  nationalism,  like  individualism,  lays  its 
emphasis  on  the  rights  of  separate  units,  not  on  their 
subordination  to  common  obligations,  though  its  units 
are  races  or  nations,  not  individual  men.  Like  individ- 
ualism it  appeals  to  the  self-assertive  instincts,  to  which 
it  promises  opportunities  of  unlimited  expansion.  Like 
individualism  it  is  a  force  of  immense  explosive  power, 
the  just  claims  of  which  must  be  conceded  before  it 
is  possible  to  invoke  any  alternative  principle  to  con- 
trol its  operations.  For  one  cannot  impose  a  super- 
national  authority  upon  irritated  or  discontented  or 
oppressed  nationalities  any  more  than  one  can  subor- 
dinate economic  motives  to  the  control  of  society,  until 
society  has  recognized  that  there  is  a  sphere  which 
they  may  legitimately  occupy.  And,  like  individual- 
ism, if  pushed  to  its  logical  conclusion,  it  is  self-destruc- 
tive. For  as  nationalism,  in  its  brilliant  youth,  be- 
gins as  a  claim  that  nations,  bocauso  thoy  are  spiritual 
beings,  shall  determine  themselves,  anrl  passes  too  often 
into  a  claim  that  they  shall  dominate  others,  so  in- 
dividualism begins  by  asserting  the   right  of  men  to 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  49 

make  of  their  own  lives  what  they  can,  and  ends  by 
condoning  the  subjection  of  the  majority  of  men  to 
the  few  whom  good  fortune  or  special  opportunity  or 
privilege  have  enabled  most  successfully  to  use  their 
rights.  They  rose  together.  It  is  probable  that,  if 
ever  they  decline,  they  will  decline  together.  For 
life  cannot  be  cut  in  compartments.  In  the  long  run 
the  world  reaps  in  war  what  it  sows  in  peace.  And 
to  expect  that  international  rivalry  can  be  exorcised  as 
long  as  the  industrial  order  within  each  nation  is  such 
as  to  give  success  to  those  whose  existence  is  a  strug- 
gle for  self-aggrandizement  is  a  dream  which  has  not 
even  the  merit  of  being  beautiful. 

So  the  perversion  of  nationalism  is  imperialism,  as 
the  perversion  of  individualism  is  industrialism.  And 
the  perversion  comes,  not  through  any  flaw  or  vice  in 
human  nature,  but  by  the  force  of  the  idea,  because 
the  principle  is  defective  and  reveals  its  defects  as 
it  reveals  its  power.  For  it  asserts  that  the  rights  of 
nations  and  individuals  are  absolute,  which  is  false, 
instead  of  asserting  that  they  are  absolute  in  their 
own  sphere,  but  that  their  sphere  itself  is  contingent 
upon  the  part  which  they  play  in  the  community  of 
nations  and  individuals,  which  is  true.  Thus  it  con- 
strains them  to  a  career  of  indefinite  expansion,  in 
which  they  devour  continents  and  oceans,  law,  mo- 
rality and  religion,  and  last  of  all  their  own  souls,  in 
an  attempt  to  attain  infinity  by  the  addition  to  them- 
selves of  all  that  is  finite.  In  the  meantime  their  rivals, 
and  their  subjects,  and  they  themselves  are  conscious 
of  the  danger  of  opposing  forces,   and    seek  to  pur- 


50  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

chase  security  and  to  avoid  a  collii^ion  by  organizing  a 
balance  of  power.  But  the  balance,  whether  in  inter- 
national politics  or  in  industry,  is  unstable,  because 
it  reposes  not  on  the  common  recognition  of  a  prin- 
ciple by  which  the  claims  of  nations  and  individuals 
are  limited,  but  on  an  attempt  to  find  an  equipoise 
which  may  avoid  a  conflict  without  adjuring  the  as- 
sertion of  unlimited  claims.  I^To  such  equipoise  can  be 
found,  because,  in  a  world  where  the  possibilities  of 
increasing  military  or  industrial  power  are  illimitable, 
no  such   equipoise  can   exist. 

Thus,  as  long  as  men  move  on  this  plane,  there  is 
no  solution.  They  can  obtain  peace  only  by  surren- 
dering the  claim  to  the  unfettered  exercise  of  their 
rights,  which  is  the  cause  of  war.  What  we  have  been 
witnessing,  in  short,  during  the  past  five  years,  both 
in  international  affairs  and  in  industry,  is  the  break- 
down of  the  organization  of  society  on  the  basis  of 
rights  divorced  from  obligations.  Sooner  or  later  the 
collapse  was  inevitable,  because  the  basis  was  too  nar- 
row. For  a  right  is  simply  a  power  which  is  secured 
by  legal  sanctions,  "  a  capacity,"  as  the  lawyers  de- 
fine it,  "  residing  in  one  man,  of  controlling,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  State,  the  action  of  others,"  and  a 
right  should  not  be  absolute  for  the  same  reason  that 
a  power  should  not  be  absolute.  No  doubt  it  is  better 
that  individuals  should  have  absolute  rights  than  that 
the  State  or  the  Government  should  have  them ;  and 
it  was  the  reaction  against  the  abuses  of  absolute  power 
by  the  State  which  Ifd  in  the  eighteen ;h  century  to 
the  declaration  of  the   abeolute  rights  of   individuals. 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  INDUSTRIALISM         51 

The  most  obvious  defense  against  the  assertion  of  one 
extreme  was  the  assertion  of  the  other.  Because  Gov- 
ernments and  the  relics  of  feudalism  had  encroached 
upon  the  property  of  individuals  it  was  affirmed  that 
the  right  of  property  was  absolute;  because  they  had 
strangled  enterprise,  it  was  affirmed  that  every  man 
had  a  natural  right  to  conduct  his  business  as  he  pleased. 
But,  in  reality,  both  the  one  assertion  and  the  other 
are  false,  and,  if  applied  to  practice,  must  lead  to 
disaster.  The  State  has  no  absolute  rights;  they  are 
limited  by  its  commission.  The  individual  has  no 
absolute  rights ;  they  are  relative  to  the  function  which 
he  performs  in  the  community  of  which  he  is  a  mem- 
ber, because,  unless  they  are  so  limited,  the  conse- 
quences must  be  something  in  the  nature  of  private 
war.  All  rights,  in  short,  are  conditional  and  deriva- 
tive, because  all  power  should  be  conditional  and  de- 
rivative. They  are  derived  from  the  end  or  purpose 
of  the  society  in  which  they  exist.  They  are  condi- 
tional on  being  used  to  contribute  to  the  attainment 
of  that  end,  not  to  thwart  it.  And  this  means  in 
practice  that,  if  society  is  to  be  healthy,  men  must 
regard  themselves  not  as  the  owners  of  rights,  but  as 
trustees  for  the  discharge  of  functions  and  the  instru- 
ments of  a  social  purpose. 


V 
PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK 

The  application  of  tho  principle  that  society  should 
be  organized  upon  the  basis  of  functions,  is  not  recon- 
dite, but  simple  and  direct.  It  offers  in  the  first  place, 
a  standard  for  discriminating  between  those  types  of 
private  property  which  are  legitimate  and  those  which 
are  not.  During  the  last  century  and  a  half,  political 
thought  has  oscillated  between  two  conceptions  of  prop- 
erty, both  of  which,  in  their  different  ways,  are  ex- 
travagant. On  the  one  hand,  the  practical  founda- 
tion of  social  organization  has  been  the  doctrine  that 
the  particular  fonns  of  private  property  which  exist 
at  any  moment  are  a  thing  sacred  and  inviolable,  that 
anything  may  properly  become  the  object  of  prop- 
erty rights,  and  that,  when  it  does,  the  title  to  it  is 
absolute  and  unconditioned.  The  modern  industrial 
system  took  shape  in  an  age  when  this  theory  of  jjrop- 
erty  was  triumphant.  The  American  Constitution  and 
the  French  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  both 
treatcfl  property  as  one  of  the  fundamental  rights 
which  Governments  exist  to  protect.  The  English  Rev- 
olution of  1088,  undogmatic  and  reticent  th()n<rh  it 
was,  had  in  effect  done  the  same.  The  great  individ- 
ualist'^ from  I.ocke  to  Turgnt,  Adam  Siiiifh  and  ]>cn- 
tham  all  rcyx  affd,  in  different  language,  a  similar  con- 
ception.     Though    what  gave   the   Revolution    its   dia- 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    53 

bolical  character  in  the  eyes  of  the  English  upper 
classes  was  its  treatment  of  property,  the  dognia  of 
the  sanctity  of  private  property  was  maintained  as  tena- 
ciously by  French  Jacobins  as  by  English  Tories ;  and 
the  theory  that  property  is  an  absolute,  which  is  held 
by  many  modern  Conservatives,  is  identical,  if  only 
they  knew  it,  with  that  not  only  of  the  men  of  1789, 
but  of  the  Convention  itself. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  attack  has  been  almost  as 
undiscriminating  as  the  defense.  "  Private  property  " 
has  been  the  central  position  against  which  the  social 
movement  of  the  last  hundred  years  has  directed  its 
forces.  The  criticism  of  it  has  ranged  from  an  im- 
aginative communism  in  the  most  elementary  and  per- 
sonal of  necessaries,  to  prosaic  and  partially  realized 
proposals  to  transfer  certain  kinds  of  property  from 
private  to  public  ownership,  or  to  limit  their  exploita- 
tion by  restrictions  imposed  by  the  State.  But,  how- 
ever varying  in  emphasis  and  in  method,  the  general 
note  of  what  may  conveniently  be  called  the  Socialist 
criticism  of  property  is  what  the  word  Socialism  itself 
implies.  Its  essence  is  the  statement  that  the  economic 
evils  of  society  are  primarily  due  to  the  unregulated 
operation,  under  modern  conditions  of  industrial  organ- 
ization, of  the  institution  of  private  property. 

The  divergence  of  opinion  is  natural,  since  in  most 
discussions  of  property  the  opposing  theorists  have  usu- 
ally been  discussing  different  things.  Property  is  the 
most  ambiguous  of  categories.  It  covers  a  multitude 
of  rights  which  have  nothing  in  common  except  that 
they  are  exercised  by  persons  and  enforced  by  the  State. 


54  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

Apart  from  these  formal  characteristics,  they  vary  in- 
definitely in  ecouoinie  character,  in  social  effect,  and 
in  moral  justification.  They  may  be  conditional  like 
the  grant  of  patent  rights,  or  absolute  like  the  own- 
ership of  ground  rents,  terminable  like  copyright,  or 
permanent  like  a  freehold,  as  comprehensive  as  sov- 
ereignty or  as  restricted  as  an  easement,  as  intimate 
and  personal  as  the  ownership  of  clothes  and  books,  or 
as  remote  and  intangible  as  shares  in  a  gold  mine  or 
rubber  plantation.  It  is  idle,  therefore,  to  present  a 
case  for  or  against  private  property  without  specify- 
ing the  particular  forms  of  property  to  which  refer- 
ence is  made,  and  the  journalist  who  says  that  *'  pri- 
vate property  is  the  foundation  of  civilization  "  agrees 
with  Proudhon,  who  said  it  was  theft,  in  this  respect 
at  least  that,  without  further  definition,  the  words  of 
both  are  meaningless.  Arguments  which  support  or 
demolish  certain  kinds  of  property  may  have  no  appli- 
cation to  others;  considerations  which  are  conclusive 
in  one  stage  of  economic  organization  may  be  almost 
irrelevant  in  the  next.  The  course  of  wisdom  is  neither 
to  attack  private  property  in  general  nor  to  defend 
it  in  general ;  for  things  are  not  similar  in  quality, 
merely  because  they  are  identical  in  name.  It  is  to 
discriminate  between  the  various  concrete  embodiments 
of  what,  in  itself,  is,  after  all,  little  more  than  an  ab- 
straction. 

The  origin  and  development  of  different  kinds  of 
proprietary  rights  is  not  material  to  this  discussion. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  historical  process  by 
which  they  have  been  established  and  recognized,  the 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    55 

rationale  of  private  property  traditional  in  England  is 
that  which  sees  in  it  the  security  that  each  man  will 
reap  where  he  has  sown.  "  If  I  despair  of  enjoying 
the  fruits  of  labor,"  said  Bentham,  repeating  what  were 
in  all  essentials  the  argijments  of  Locke,  "  I  shall  only 
live  from  day  to  day;  I  shall  not  undertake  labors 
which  will  only  benefit  my  enemies."  Property,  it  is 
argued,  is  a  moral  right,  and  not  merely  a  legal  right, 
because  it  insures  that  the  producer  will  not  be  de- 
prived by  violence  of  the  result  of  his  efforts.  The 
period  from  which  that  doctrine  was  inherited  differed 
from  our  own  in  three  obvious,  but  significant,  respects. 
Property  in  land  and  in  the  simple  capital  used  in 
most  industries  was  widely  distributed.  Before  the  rise 
of  capitalist  agriculture  and  capitalist  industry,  the 
ownership,  or  at  any  rate  the  secure  and  effective  occu- 
pation, of  land  and  tools  by  those  who  used  them,  was 
a  condition  precedent  to  effective  work  in  the  field 
or  in  the  workshop.  The  forces  which  threatened  prop- 
erty were  the  fiscal  policy  of  Governments  and  in  some 
countries,  for  example  France,  the  decaying  relics  of 
feudalism.  The  interference  both  of  the  one  and  of 
the  other  involved  the  sacrifice  of  those  who  carried 
on  useful  labor  to  those  who  did  not.  To  resist  them 
was  to  protect  not  only  property  but  industry,  which 
was  indissolubly  connected  with  it.  Too  often,  indeed, 
resistance  was  ineffective.  Accustomed  to  the  misery 
of  the  rural  proprietor  in  France,  Voltaire  remarked 
with  astonishment  that  in  England  the  peasant  may 
be  rich,  and  "  does  not  fear  to  increase  the  number 
of  his  beasts  or  to  cover  his  roof  with  tiles."     And 


56  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

the  English  Parliainontarians  and  tho  French  phi- 
losophers who  made  the  inviolability  of  property  rights 
the  center  of  their  political  theory,  when  they  defended 
those  who  owned,  were  incidentally,  if  sometimes  unin- 
tentionally, defending  those  who  labored.  They  were 
protecting  the  yeoman  or  the  master  craftsman  or  the 
merchant  from  seeing  the  fruits  of  his  toil  squandered 
by  tho  hangers-on  at  St.  James  or  the  courtly  parasites 
of  Versailles. 

In  such  circumstances  the  doctrine  which  found  the 
justification  of  private  property  in  the  fact  that  it 
enabled  the  industrious  man  to  reap  where  he  had 
sown,  was  not  a  paradox,  but,  as  far  as  the  mass  of 
the  population  was  concerned,  almost  a  truism.  Prop- 
erty was  defended  as  the  most  sacred  of  rights.  But 
it  was  defended  as  a  right  which  was  not  only  widely 
exercised,  but  which  was  indispensable  to  the  per- 
formance of  the  active  function  of  providing  food  and 
clothing.  For  it  consisted  predominantly  of  one  of 
two  types,  land  or  tools  which  were  used  by  the  owner 
for  the  purpose  of  production,  and  personal  posses- 
sions which  were  the  necessities  or  amenities  of  civil- 
ized existence.  The  former  had  its  ralionale  in  the 
fact  that  the  land  of  the  peasant  or  the  tools  of  the 
craftsman  were  the  condition  of  his  rendering  the  eco- 
nomic services  which  society  required;  the  latter  be- 
cause furniture  and  clothes  are  indispensable  to  a  life 
of  decency  and  eomfort.  The  proj)rietary  rights — and, 
of  course,  they  wero  numerous — which  had  their  source, 
not  in  work,  but  in  predatorv  force,  were  protected 
from  criticism  bv  the  wide  distribution  of  some  kind 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    57 

of  property  among  the  mass  of  the  population,  and 
in  England,  at  least,  the  cruder  of  them  were  grad- 
ually whittled  down.  When  property  in  land  and  what 
simple  capital  existed  were  generally  diffused  among 
all  classes  of  society,  when,  in  most  parts  of  England, 
the  typical  workman  was  not  a  laborer  but  a  peasant 
or  small  master,  who  could  point  to  the  strips  which 
he  had  plowed  or  the  cloth  which  he  had  woven, 
when  the  greater  part  of  the  wealth  passing  at  death 
consisted  of  land,  household  furniture  and  a  stock  in 
trade  which  was  hardly  distinguishable  from  it,  the 
moral  justification  of  the  title  to  property  was  self- 
evident.  It  was  obviously,  what  theorists  said  that  it 
was,  and  plain  men  knew  it  to  be,  the  labor  spent  in 
producing,  acquiring  and  administering  it. 

Such  property  was  not  a  burden  upon  society,  but 
a  condition  of  its  health  and  efhciency,  and  indeed,  of 
its  continued  existence.  To  protect  it  was  to  main- 
tain the  organization  through  which  public  necessi- 
ties were  supplied.  If,  as  in  Tudor  England,  the  peas- 
ant was  evicted  from  his  holding  to  make  room  for 
sheep,  or  crushed,  as  in  eighteenth  century  France,  by 
arbitrary  taxation  and  seignurial  dues,  land  went  out 
of  cultivation  and  the  whole  community  was  short  of 
food.  If  the  tools  of  the  carpenter  or  smith  were 
seized,  plows  were  not  repaired  or  horses  shod. 
Hence,  before  the  rise  of  a  commercial  civilization,  it 
was  the  mark  of  statesmanship,  alike  in  the  England 
of  the  Tudors  and  in  the  France  of  Henry  IV,  to 
cherish  the  small  property-owner  even  to  the  point  of 
offending  the  great.     Popular  sentiment  idealized  the 


68  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

yeoman — "  the  Joseph  of  the  country  who  keeps  the 
poor  from  starving  " — not  merely  because  he  owned 
property,  but  because  he  worked  on  it,  denounced  that 
"  bringing  of  the  livings  of  many  into  the  hands  of  one," 
which  capitalist  societies  regard  with  equanimity  as 
an  inevitable,  and,  apparently,  a  laudable  result  of  eco- 
nomic development,  cursed  the  usurer  who  took  advan- 
tage of  his  neighbor's  necessities  to  live  without  labor, 
was  shocked  by  the  callous  indifference  to  public  wel- 
fare shown  by  those  who  "  not  having  before  their 
eyes  either  God  or  the  profit  and  advantage  of  the 
realm,  have  enclosed  with  hedges  and  dykes  towns  and 
hamlets,"  and  was  sufficiently  powerful  to  compel  Gov- 
ernments to  intervene  to  prevent  the  laying  of  field  to 
field,  and  the  engrossing  of  looms — to  set  limits,  in 
short,  to  the  scale  to  which  property  might  grow. 

When  Bacon,  who  commended  Henry  VII  for  pro- 
tecting the  tenant  right  of  the  small  farmer,  and  ])leaded 
in  the  House  of  Commons  for  more  drastic  land  legis- 
lation, wrote  "  Wealth  is  like  muck.  It  is  not  good 
but  if  it  be  spread,"  he  was  expressing  in  an  epigram 
what  was  the  conmionplace  of  every  writer  on  politics 
from  Fortescue  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  to 
Harrington  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth.  The 
modern  conservative,  who  is  inclined  to  take  au  pied  de 
la  lettre  the  vigorous  argument  in  which  Lord  Hugh 
Cecil  denounces  the  doctrine  that  the  maintenance  of 
proprietary  rights  ought  to  be  contingent  upon  the  use 
to  which  they  are  put,  may  be  reminded  that  Lord 
Hugh's  own  theory  is  of  a  kind  to  make  his  ancestors 
turn    in    their    graven.      Of    the    two    members    of    the 


PKOPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    59 

family  who  achieved  distinction  before  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  elder  advised  the  Crown  to  prevent  land- 
lords evicting  tenants,  and  actually  proposed  to  fix  a 
pecuniary  maximum  to  the  property  which  different 
classes  might  possess,  while  the  younger  attacked  en- 
closing in  Parliament,  and  carried  legislation  compel- 
ling landlords  to  build  cottages,  to  let  them  with  small 
holdings,  and  to  plow  up  pasture. 

William  and  Robert  Cecil  were  sagacious  and  re- 
sponsible men,  and  their  view  that  the  protection  of 
property  should  be  accompanied  by  the  enforcement  of 
obligations  upon  its  owners  was  shared  by  most  of  their 
contemporaries.  The  idea  that  the  institution  of  pri- 
vate property  involves  the  right  of  the  owner  to  use  it, 
or  refrain  from  using  it,  in  such  a  way  as  he  may  please, 
and  that  its  principal  significance  is  to  supply  him  with 
an  income,  irrespective  of  any  duties  which  he  may  dis- 
charge, would  not  have  been  understood  by  most  public 
men  of  that  age,  and,  if  understood,  would  have  been 
repudiated  with  indignation  by  the  more  reputable 
among  them.  They  found  the  meaning  of  property 
in  the  public  purposes  to  which  it  contributed,  whether 
they  were  the  production  of  food,  as  among  the  peas- 
antry, or  the  management  of  public  affairs,  as  among 
the  gentry,  and  hesitated  neither  to  maintain  those  kinds 
of  property  which  met  these  obligations  nor  to  repress 
those  uses  of  it  which  appeared  likely  to  conflict  with 
them.  Property  was  to  be  an  aid  to  creative  work,  not 
an  alternative  to  it.  The  patentee  was  secured  pro- 
tection for  a  new  invention,  in  order  to  secure  him  the 
fruits  of  his  own  brain,  but  the  monopolist  who  grew 


60  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

fat  on  the  industry  of  others  was  to  be  put  down.  The 
law  of  the  village  bound  the  peasant  to  use  his  land,  not 
as  he  himself  might  find  most  profitable,  but  to  grow  the 
com  the  village  needed.  Long  after  political  changes 
had  made  direct  interference  impracticable,  even  the 
higher  ranks  of  English  landowners  continued  to  dis- 
charge, however  capriciously  and  tyrannieally,  duties 
which  were  vaguely  felt  to  be  the  contribution  which 
they  made  to  the  public  service  in  virtue  of  their  estates. 
When  as  in  France,  the  obligations  of  ownership  were 
repudiated  almost  as  completely  as  they  have  been  by 
the  owner  of  to-day,  nemesis  came  in  an  onslaught  upon 
the  position  of  a  vohlrsse  which  had  retained  its  rights 
and  abdicated  its  functions.  Property  reposed,  in  short, 
not  merely  upon  convenience,  or  the  appetite  for  gain, 
but  on  a  moral  principle.  It  was  protected  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  those  who  owned,  but  for  the  sake  of 
those  who  worked  and  of  those  for  whom  their  work 
provided.  It  was  protected,  because,  without  security 
for  property,  wealth  could  not  be  produced  or  the 
business  of  society  carried  on. 

"Whatever  the  future  may  eontain,  the  past  has  shown 
no  more  excellent  sociiil  order  than  that  in  which  the 
mass  of  the  people  were  the  masters  of  the  holdjjigs 
which  they  plowed  and  of  the  tools  with  which  they 
worked,  and  could  boast,  with  the  English  freeholder, 
that  "  it  is  a  quietness  to  a  nuin's  mind  to  live  upon 
his  own  and  to  know  his  heir  certain."  With  this  con- 
ceptioTi  of  f)ropcrty  and  it>  j)r:irticnl  expression  in  social 
institutions  those  who  urge  that  society  should  be  organ- 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK  61 

ized  on  the  basis  of  function  have  no  quarrel.  It  is  in 
agreement  with  their  own  doctrine,  since  it  justifies 
property  by  reference  to  the  services  which  it  enables 
its  owner  to  perform.  All  that  they  need  ask  is  that 
it  should  be  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion. 

For  the  argument  has  evidently  more  than  one  edge. 
If  it  justifies  certain  types  of  property,  it  condemns 
others ;  and  in  the  conditions  of  modern  industrial  civi- 

i  lization,  what  it  justifies  is  less  than  what  it  condemns. 

>  The  truth  is,  indeed,  that  this  theory  of  property  and 
the  institutions  in  which  it  is  embodied  have  survived 
into  an  age  in  which  the  whole  structure  of  society  is 
radically  different  from  that  in  which  it  was  formu- 
lated, and  which  made  it  a  valid  argument,  if  not  for 
all,  at  least  for  the  most  common  and  characteristic 
kinds  of  property.  It  is  not  merely  that  the  ownership 
of  any  substantial  share  in  the  national  wealth  is  con- 
centrated to-day  in  the  hands  of  a  few  hundred  thou- 
sand families,  and  that  at  the  end  of  an  age  which 
began  with  an  affirmation  of  the  rights  of  property,  pro- 
prietary rights  are,  in  fact,  far  from  being  widely  dis- 
tributed. Nor  is  it  merely  that  what  makes  property 
insecure  to-day  is  not  the  arbitrary  taxation  of  uncon- 
stitutional monarchies  or  the  privileges  of  an  idle 
noblesse,  but  the  insatiable  expansion  and  aggregation 
of  property  itself,  which  menaces  with  absorption  all 
property  less  than  the  greatest,  the  small  master,  the 
little  shopkeeper,  the  country  bank,  and  has  turned 
the  mass  of  mankind  into  a  proletariat  working  under 
the  agents  and  for  the  profit  of  those  who  own. 

The    characteristic    fact,    which    differentiates    most 


62  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

modern  property  from  that  of  the  pre-industrial  age, 
and  which  turns  against  it  tlie  very  reasoning  hy  which 
formerly  it  was  supported,  is  that  in  modern  economic 
conditions  ownership  is  not  active,  but  passive,  that  to 
most  of  those  who  own  property  to-day  it  is  not  a  means 
of  work  but  an  instrument  for  the  acquisition  of  gain 
or  the  exercise  of  power,  and  that  there  is  no  guarantee 
that  gain  bears  any  relation  to  service,  or  power  to 
responsibility.  For  property  which  can  be  regarded  as 
a  condition  of  the  performance  of  function,  like  the  tools 
of  the  craftsman,  or  the  holding  of  the  peasant,  or  the 
personal  possessions  which  contribute  to  a  life  of  health 
and  efficiency,  forms  an  insignificant  proportion,  as  far 
as  its  value  is  concerned,  of  the  property  rights  exist- 
ing at  present.  In  modem  industrial  societies  the  great 
mass  of  property  consists,  as  the  annual  review  of  wealth 
passing  at  death  reveals,  neither  of  personal  acquisitions 
such  as  household  furniture,  nor  of  the  owner's  stock- 
in-trade,  but  of  rights  of  various  kinds,  such  as  royal- 
ties, ground-rents,  and,  above  all,  of  course  shares  in 
industrial  undertakings  which  yield  an  income  irre- 
spective of  any  personal  service  rendered  by  their 
owners.  Ownership  and  use  are  normally  divorced. 
The  greater  part  of  modern  property  has  been  atten- 
uated to  a  pecuniary  lien  or  bond  on  the  product  of 
industry  which  carries  with  it  a  right  to  pa;yment,  but 
which  is  normally  valued  precisely  because  it  relieves 
the  owner  from  any  obligation  to  jx'rforin  ii  positive  or 
constructive  function. 

Such   property  may  be  called   passive   property,   or 
property  for  acquisition,  for  exploitation,  or  for  power, 


PROPEKTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    63 

to  distinguish  it  from  the  property  which  is  actively 
used  by  its  owner  for  the  conduct  of  his  profession  or 
the  upkeep  of  his  household.  To  the  lawyer  the  first 
is,  of  course,  as  fully  property  as  the  second.  It  is 
questionable,  however,  whether  economists  shall  call  it 
"  Property  "  at  all,  and  not  rather,  as  Mr.  Hobson  has 
suggested,  "  Improperty,"  since  it  is  not  identical  with 
the  rights  which  secure  the  owner  the  produce  of  his 
toil,  but  is  opposite  of  them.  A  classification  of  pro- 
prietary rights  based  upon  this  difference  would  be  in- 
structive. If  they  were  arranged  according  to  the  close- 
ness with  which  they  approximate  to  one  or  other  of 
these  two  extremes,  it  would  be  found  that  they  were 
spread  along  a  line  stretching  from  property  which  is 
obviously  the  payment  for,  and  condition  of,  personal 
services,  to  property  which  is  merely  a  right  to  pay- 
ment from  the  services  rendered  by  others,  in  fact  a 
private  tax.  The  rough  order  which  would  emerge,  if 
all  details  and  qualification  were  omitted,  might  be 
something  as  follows: — 

1.  Property  in  payments  made  for  personal  services. 

2.  Property    in    personal    possessions    necessary    to 
health  and  comfort. 

3.  Property  in  land  and  tools  used  by  their  owners. 

4.  Property  in  copyright  and  patent  rights  owned  by 
authors  and  inventors. 

5.  Property  in  pure  interest,  including  much  agri- 
cultural rent. 

6.  Property  in  profits  of  luck  and  good  fortune: 
"  quasi-rents." 

7.  Property  in  monopoly  profits. 


64  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

8.  Property  in  urban  ground  rents. 

9.  Property  in  rt»yalties. 

The  first  four  kinds  of  property  obviously  accompany, 
and  in  some  sense  condition,  the  performance  of  work. 
The  last  four  obviously  do  not.  Pure  interest  has  some 
affinities  with  both.  It  represents  a  necessary  economic 
cost,  the  equivalent  of  which  must  be  born,  whatever  the 
legal  arrangements  under  which  property  is  held,  and 
is  thus  unlike  the  property  representd  by  profits  (other 
than  the  equivalent  of  salaries  and  payment  for  neces- 
sary risk),  urban  ground-rents  and  royalties.  It  re- 
lieves the  recipient  from  personal  services,  and  thus 
resembles  them. 

The  crucial  question  for  any  society  is,  under  which 
each  of  these  two  broad  groups  of  categories  the  greater 
part  (measured  in  value)  of  the  proprietary  rights 
which  it  maintains  are  at  any  given  moment  to  be  found. 
If  they  fall  in  the  first  group  creative  work  will  be 
encouraged  and  idleness  will  be  depressed ;  if  they  fall 
in  the  second,  the  result  will  be  the  reverse.  The  facts 
vary  widely  from  age  to  age  and  from  country  to  coun- 
try. Xor  have  they  ever  been  fully  revealed ;  for  the 
lords  of  the  jungle  do  not  hunt  by  daylight.  It  is 
probable,  at  least,  that  in  the  England  of  1550  to  1750, 
a  larger  proportion  of  the  existing  property  consisted  of 
land  and  tools  used  by  their  owners  than  either  in  con- 
temporary France,  where  feudal  dues  absorbed  a  con- 
siderable pro])ortion  of  the  peasants'  income,  or  than  in 
the  England  of  1800  to  1850,  where  the  new  capitalist 
manufacturers  made  hundreds  per  cent  while  manual 
workers  were  goaded  by  starvation  into  ineffectual  re- 


PEOPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    65 

volt.  It  is  probable  that  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
thanks  to  the  Revolution,  France  and  England  changed 
places,  and  that  in  this  respect  not  only  Ireland  but  the 
British  Dominions  resemble  the  former  rather  than  the 
latter.  The  transformation  can  be  studied  best  of  all  in 
the  United  States,  in  parts  of  which  the  population  of 
peasant  proprietors  and  small  masters  of  the  early  nine- 
teenth century  were  replaced  in  three  generations  by  a 
propertyless  proletariat  and  a  capitalist  plutocracy. 
The  abolition  of  the  economic  privileges  of  agrarian 
feudalism,  which,  under  the  name  of  equality,  was  the 
driving  force  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  which  has 
taken  place,  in  one  form  or  another,  in  all  countries 
touched  by  its  influence,  has  been  largely  counter- 
balanced since  1800  by  the  growth  of  the  inequalities 
springing  from  Industrialism. 

In  England  the  general  effect  of  recent  economic 
development  has  been  to  swell  proprietary  rights  which 
entitle  the  owners  to  payment  without  work,  and  to 
diminish  those  which  ran  properly  be  described  as 
functional.  The  expansion  of  the  former,  and  the 
process  by  which  the  simpler  forms  of  property  have 
been  merged  in  them,  are  movements  the  significance  of 
which  it  is  hardly  possible  to  over-estimate.  There  is, 
of  course,  a  considerable  body  of  property  which  is  still 
of  the  older  type.  But  though  working  landlords,  and 
capitalists  who  manage  their  own  businesses,  are  still 
in  the  aggregate  a  numerous  body,  the  organization  for 
which  they  stand  is  not  that  which  is  most  representa- 
tive of  the  modern  economic  world.  The  general  tend- 
ency for  the  ownership  and   administration  of  prop- 


G6  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

erty  to  be  separated,  the  general  refinement  of  property 
into  a  claim  on  goods  produced  by  an  unknown  worker, 
is  as  unmistakable  as  the  growth  of  capitalist  industry 
and  urban  civilization  themselves.     Villages  are  turned 
into  towns  and  property  in  land  changes  from  the  hold- 
ing worked  by  a  fanner  or  the  estate  administered  by  a 
landlord  into  "  rents,"  which  are  advertised  and  bought 
and  sold  like  any  other  investment.     Mines  are  opened 
and  the  rights  of  the  landowner  are  converted  into  a 
tribute  for  every  ton  of  coal  which  is  brought  to  the 
surface.    As  joint-stock  companies  take  the  place  of  the 
individual  enterprise  which  was  typical  of  the  earlier 
years  of  the  factory  system,  organization  passes  from  the 
employer  who  both  owns  and  manages  his  business,  into 
the  hands  of  salaried  officials,  and  again  the  mass  of 
property-owners    is   swollen    by    the    multiplication    of 
rentiers  who  put  their  wealth  at  the  disposal  of  indus- 
try, but  who  have  no  other  connection  with  it.     The 
change  is  taking  place  in  our  day  most  conspicuously, 
perhaps,  through  the  displacement  in  retail  trade  of  the 
small  shopkeeper  by  the  multiple  store,  and  the  substi- 
tution in  manufacturing  industry  of  combines  and  amal- 
gamations for  separate  businesses  conducted  by  compet- 
ing employers.     And,  of  course,  it  is  not  only  by  eco- 
nomic development  that  such  claims  are  created.     "  Out 
of  the  cater  came  forth  meat,  and   nut  of  the  strong 
came  forth  sweetness."    It  is  pn)bal)l('  that  war,  which  in 
barbarous   ages   used    to   be   blamed    as   destructive   of 
property,  has  recently  created  more  titles  to  property 
than  almost  all  other  causes  put  together. 

Infinitely  diverse  as  are  these  proprietary  rights,  they 


PEOPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    67 

have  the  common  characteristic  of  being  so  entirely  sepa- 
rated from  the  actual  objects  over  which  they  are  exer- 
cised, so  rarified  and  generalized,  as  to  be  analogous 
almost  to  a  form  of  currency  rather  than  to  the  property 
which  is  so  closely  united  to  its  owner  as  to  seem  a 
part  of  him.  Their  isolation  from  the  rough  environ- 
ment of  economic  life,  where  the  material  objects  of 
which  they  are  the  symbol  are  shaped  and  handled,  is 
their  charm.  It  is  also  their  danger.  The  hold  which  a 
class  has  upon  the  future  depends  on  the  function  which 
it  performs.  What  nature  demands  is  work :  few  work- 
ing aristocracies,  however  tyrannical,  have  fallen;  few 
functionless  aristocracies  have  survived.  In  society,  as 
in  the  world  of  organic  life,  atrophy  is  but  one  stage 
removed  from  death.  In  proportion  as  the  landowner 
becomes  a  mere  rentier  and  industry  is  conducted,  not 
by  the  rude  energy  of  the  competing  employers  who 
dominated  its  infancy,  but  by  the  salaried  servants  of 
shareholders,  the  argument  for  private  property  which 
reposes  on  the  impossibility  of  finding  any  organization 
to  supersede  them  loses  its  application,  for  they  are 
already  superseded. 

Whatever  may  be  the  justification  of  these  types  of 
property,  it  cannot  be  that  which  was  given  for  the 
property  of  the  peasant  or  the  craftsman.  It  cannot  be 
that  they  are  necessary  in  order  to  secure  to  each  man 
the  fruits  of  his  own  labor.  For  if  a  legal  right  which 
gives  $200,000  a  year  to  a  mineral  owner  in  the  North 
of  England  and  to  a  ground  landlord  in  London  "  se- 
cures the  fruits  of  labor  "  at  all,  the  fruits  are  the  pro- 
prietor's and  the  labor  that  of  some  one  else.    Property 


68  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

has  no  more  insidious  enemies  than  those  well-meaning 
anarchists  who,  by  dcfendin"-  all  forms  of  it  as  equally 
valid,  involve  the  institution  in  the  discredit  attaching 
to  its  extravagances.  In  reality,  whatever  conclusion 
may  be  drawn  from  the  fact,  the  greater  part  of  modern 
property,  whether,  like  mineral  rights  and  urban 
ground-rents,  it  is  merely  a  form  of  private  taxation 
which  the  law  allows  certain  persons  to  levy  on  the 
industry  of  others,  or  whether,  like  property  in  capital, 
it  consists  of  rights  to  payment  for  instruments  which 
the  capitalist  cannot  himself  use  but  puts  at  the  disposal 
of  those  who  can,  has  as  its  essential  feature  that  it 
confers  upon  its  owners  income  unaccompanied  by  per- 
sonal service.  In  this  respect  the  ownership  of  land 
and  the  ownership  of  capital  are  normally  similar, 
though  from  other  points  of  view  their  differences  are 
important.  To  the  economist  rent  and  interest  are  dis- 
tinguished by  the  fact  that  the  latter,  though  it  is  often 
accompanied  by  surplus  eleinciits  which  are  merged  with 
it  in  dividends,  is  the  price  of  an  instrument  of  pro- 
duction which  would  not  be  forthcoming  for  industry  if 
the  price  were  not  paid,  while  the  former  is  a  differ- 
ential surplus  which  does  not  affect  the  supply.  To  the 
business  community  and  the  solicitor  land  and  capital 
are  equally  investments,  between  which,  since  they  pos- 
sess the  common  characteristic  of  yii'lding  income  with- 
out labor,  it  is  inequitable  to  dtooriminatc;  and  though 
their  significance  as  economic  catogoriee  may  be  dif- 
ferent, their  effect  as  social  iiKtitutioiK  is  the  sam<\  It 
is  to  separate  property  from  creative  ability,  and  to 
divide  society  into  two  classes,  of  which  one  has   its 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    69 

primary  interest  in  passive  ownership,  while  the  other 
is  mainly  dependent  upon  active  work. 

Hence  the  real  analogy  to  many  kinds  of  modern 
property  is  not  the  simple  property  of  the  small  land- 
owner or  the  craftsman,  still  less  the  household  goods 
and  dear  domestic  amenities,  which  is  what  the  word 
suggests  to  the  guileless  minds  of  clerks  and  shopkeepers, 
and  which  stampede  them  into  displaying  the  ferocity 
of  terrified  sheep  when  the  cry  is  raised  that  "  Prop- 
erty "  is  threatened.  It  is  the  feudal  dues  which  robbed 
the  French  peasant  of  part  of  his  produce  till  the  Revo- 
lution abolished  them.  How  do  royalties  differ  from 
quintaines  and  lods  et  ventes?  They  are  similar  in  their 
origin  and  similar  in  being  a  tax  levied  on  each  incre- 
ment of  wealth  which  labor  produces.  How  do  urban 
ground-rents  differ  from  the  payments  which  were  made 
to  English  sinecurists  before  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832? 
They  are  equally  tribute  paid  by  those  who  work  to  those 
who  do  not.  If  the  monopoly  profits  of  the  owner  of 
hanalites,  whose  tenant  must  grind  corn  at  his  mill  and 
make  wine  at  his  press,  were  an  intolerable  oppression, 
what  is  the  sanctity  attaching  to  the  monopoly  profits 
of  the  capitalists,  who,  as  the  Report  of  the  Government 
Committee  on  trusts  tells  us,  "  in  soap,  tobacco,  wall- 
paper, salt,  cement  and  in  the  textile  trades  .  .  .  are 
in  a  position  to  control  output  and  prices  "  or,  in  other 
words,  can  compel  the  consumer  to  buy  from  them,  at 
the  figure  they  fix,  on  pain  of  not  buying  at  all  ? 

All  these  rights — royalties,  ground-rents,  monopoly 
profits — are  ''  Property."  The  criticism  most  fatal  to 
them  is  not  that  of  Socialists.     It  is  contained  in  the 


70  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

arguments  by  which  property  is  usually  defended.  For 
if  the  meaning  of  the  institution  is  to  encourage  indus- 
try by  securing  that  the  worker  shall  receive  the  produce 
of  his  toil,  then  precisely  in  proportion  as  it  is  important 
to  preserve  the  property  which  a  man  has  in  the  results 
of  his  owm  efforts,  is  it  important  to  abolish  that  which 
he  has  in  the  results  of  the  efforts  of  some  one  else.  The 
considerations  which  justify  ownership  as  a  function  are 
those  which  condemn  it  as  a  tax.  Property  is  not  theft, 
but  a  good  deal  of  theft  becomes  property.  The  owner 
of  royalties  who,  when  asked  why  he  should  be  paid 
£50,000  a  year  from  minerals  which  he  has  neither 
discovered  nor  developed  nor  worked  but  only  owned, 
replies  "  But  it's  Property !  "  may  feel  all  the  awe 
which  his  language  suggests.  But  in  reality  he  is  be- 
having like  the  snake  which  sinks  into  its  background 
by  pretending  that  it  is  the  dead  branch  of  a  tree,  or 
the  lunatic  who  tried  to  catch  rabbits  by  sitting  behind 
a  hedge  and  making  a  noise  like  a  turnip.  He  is  prac- 
tising protective — and  sometimes  aggressive — mimicry. 
Ilis  sentiments  about  property  are  those  of  the  simple 
toiler  who  fears  that  what  he  has  sown  another  may 
reap.  Ilis  claim  is  to  be  allowed  to  continue  to  reap 
what  another  has  sown. 

It  is  sometimes  suggested  that  the  less  attractive  char- 
acteristics of  our  industrial  civilization,  its  combination 
of  luxury  and  scpialor,  its  class  divisions  and  class 
warfare,  are  accidental  maladjustments  which  are  not 
rooted  in  the  center  of  its  being,  but  are  excrescences 
which  economic  progress  itself  may  in  time  be  expected 
to  correct.    That  agreeable  optimism  will  nut  survive  an 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    71 

examination  of  the  operation  of  the  institution  of  pri- 
vate property  in  land  and  capital  in  industrialized  com- 
munities. In  countries  where  land  is  widely  distributed, 
in  France  or  in  Ireland,  its  effect  may  be  to  produce 
a  general  diffusion  of  wealth  among  a  rural  middle 
class  who  at  once  work  and  own.  In  countries  where 
the  development  of  industrial  organization  has  sepa- 
rated the  ownership  of  property  and  the  performance  of 
work,  the  normal  effect  of  private  property  is  to  trans- 
fer to  functionless  owners  the  surplus  arising  from  the 
more  fertile  sites,  the  better  machinery,  the  more  elabo- 
rate organization.  No  clearer  exemplifications  of  this 
"  law  of  rent  "  has  been  given  than  the  figures  supplied 
to  the  Coal  Industry  Commission  by  Sir  Arthur  Lowes 
Dickenson,  which  showed  that  in  a  given  quarter  the 
costs  per  ton  of  producing  coal  varied  from  $3.12  to 
$12  per  ton,  and  the  profits  from  nil  to  $4.12.  The  dis- 
tribution in  dividends  to  shareholders  of  the  surplus 
accruing  from  the  working  of  richer  and  more  acces- 
sible seams,  from  special  opportunities  and  access  to 
markets,  from  superior  machinery,  management  and  or- 
ganization, involves  the  establishment  of  Privilege  as  a 
national  institution,  as  much  as  the  most  arbitrary  exac- 
tions of  a  feudal  seigneur.  It  is  the  foundation  of  an 
inequality  which  is  not  accidental  or  temporary,  but 
necessary  and  permanent.  And  on  this  inequality  is 
erected  the  whole  apparatus  of  class  institutions,  which 
make  not  only  the  income,  but  the  housing,  education, 
health  and  manners,  indeed  the  very  physical  appear- 
ance of  different  classes  of  Englishmen  almost  as  dif- 
ferent from  each  other  as  though  the  minority  were 


72  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIP^TY 

alien  settlers  established  amid  the  rude  civilization  af  a 
race  of  impoverished  aborigines. 

So  the  justification  of  private  property  traditional  in 
England,  which  saw  in  it  the  security  that  each  man 
would  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his  own  labor,  though  largely 
applicable  to  the  age  in  which  it  was  formulated,  has 
undergone  the  fate  of  most  political  theories.  It  has 
been  refuted  not  by  the  doctrines  of  rival  philosophers, 
but  by  the  prosaic  course  of  economic  development-  As 
far  as  the  mass  of  mankind  arc  concerned,  the  need 
which  private  property  other  than  personal  possessions 
does  still  often  satisfy,  though  imperfectly  and  precari- 
ously, is  the  need  for  security.  To  the  smaFl  ir.vest^rs, 
who  are  the  majority  of  property-owners,  though  owning 
only  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the  property  in  cj^i-rt- 
ence,  its  meaning  is  simple.  It  is  not  wealth  or  power, 
or  even  leisure  from  work.  It  is  safety.  They  work 
hard.  They  save  a  little  money  for  old  age,  or  for  sick- 
ness, or  for  their  children.  They  invest  it,  and  the 
interest  stands  between  them  and  all  that  they  dread 
most.  Their  savings  are  of  convenience  to  industry,  the 
income  from  them  is  convenient  to  themselves. 
"  Why,"  they  ask,  "  should  we  not  reap  in  old  age  the 
advantage  of  energy  and  thrift  in  youth  ?  "  And  this 
hunger  for  security  is  so  imjxrious  that  those  who  suflfer 
most  from  the  abuses  of  property,  as  well  as  those  who, 
if  they  could  profit  by  them,  would  be  least  inclined  to 
do  so,  will  tolerate  and  even  defend  them,  for  fear  lest 
the  knife  which  trims  dead  matter  should  c«t  info  the 
quick.     They  have  seen  too  many  men  drown  to  Ik"  criti- 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK     73 

cal  of  dry  land,  though  it  be  an  inhospitable  rock.  They 
are  haunted  by  the  nightmare  of  the  future,  and,  if  a 
burglar  broke  it,  would  welcome  a  burglar. 

This  need  for  security  is  fundamental,  and  almost  the 
gravest  indictment  of  our  civilization  is  that  the  mass 
of  mankind  are  without  it.  Property  is  one  way  of 
organizing  it.  It  is  quite  comprehensible  therefore, 
that  the  instrument  should  be  confused  with  the  end, 
and  that  any  proposal  to  modify  it  should  create  dismay. 
In  the  past,  human  beings,  roads,  bridges  and  ferries, 
civil,  judicial  and  clerical  offices,  and  commissions  in 
the  army  have  all  been  private  property.  Whenever  it 
was  proposed  to  abolish  the  rights  exercised  over  them, 
it  was  protested  that  their  removal  would  involve  the 
destruction  of  an  institution  in  which  thrifty  men  had 
invested  their  savings,  and  on  which  they  depended  for 
protection  amid  the  chances  of  life  and  for  comfort  in 
old  age.  In  fact,  however,  property  is  not  the  only 
method  of  assuring  the  future,  nor,  when  it  is  the  way 
selected,  is  security  dependent  upon  the  maintenance  of 
all  the  rights  which  are  at  present  normally  involved  in 
ownership.  In  so  far  as  its  psychological  foundation  is 
the  necessity  for  securing  an  income  which  is  stable  and 
certain,  which  is  forthcoming  when  its  recipient  cannot 
work,  and  which  can  be  used  to  provide  for  those  who 
cannot  provide  for  themselves,  what  is  really  demanded 
is  not  the  command  over  the  fluctuating  proceeds  of  some 
particular  undertaking,  which  accompanies  the  owner- 
ship of  capital,  but  the  security  which  is  offered  by  an 
annuity.  Property  is  the  instrument,  security  is  the 
object,  and  when  some  alternative  way  is  forthcoming 


74  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

of  providing  the  latter,  it  does  not  appear  in  practice 
that  any  loss  of  confidence,  or  freedom  or  independence 
is  caused  by  the  absence  of  the  former. 

Hence  not  only  the  manual  workers,  who  since  the 
rise  of  capitalism,  have  rarely  in  England  been  able 
to  accumulate  property  sufficient  to  act  as  a  guarantee 
of  income  when  their  period  of  active  earning  is  past, 
but  also  the  middle  and  professional  classes,  increas- 
ingly seek  security  to-day,  not  in  investment,  but  in 
insurance  against  sickness  and  death,  in  the  purchase 
of  annuities,  or  in  what  is  in  effect  the  same  thing,  the 
accumulation  of  part  of  their  salary  towards  a  pension 
which  is  paid  when  their  salary  ceases.  The  profes- 
sional man  may  buy  shares  in  the  hope  of  making  a 
profit  on  the  transaction.  But  when  what  he  desires  to 
buy  is  security,  the  form  which  his  investment  takes  is 
usually  one  kind  or  another  of  insurance.  The  teacher, 
or  nurse,  or  government  servant  looks  forward  to  a  pen- 
sion. Women,  who  fifty  years  ago  would  have  been  re- 
garded as  dependent  almost  as  completely  as  if  femi- 
ninity were  an  incurable  disease  with  which  they  had 
been  born,  and  whose  fathers,  unless  rich  men,  would 
have  been  tormented  with  anxiety  for  fear  lest  they 
should  not  save  sufficient  to  provide  for  them,  now  re- 
ceive an  education,  support  themselves  in  professions, 
and  save  in  the  same  way.  It  is  still  only  in  compara- 
tively few  cases  that  this  type  of  provision  is  made; 
almost  all  wage-earners  outi^ide  government  employ- 
ment, and  many  in  it,  as  well  as  large  numbers  of 
professional  men,  have  nothing  to  fall  back  upon  in 
sickness  or  old  age.     But  that  does  not  alter  the  fact 


PKOPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    75 

that,  when  it  is  made,  it  meets  the  need  for  security, 
which,  apart,  of  course,  from  personal  possessions  and 
household  furniture,  is  the  principal  meaning  of  prop- 
erty to  by  far  the  largest  element  in  the  population, 
and  that  it  meets  it  more  completely  and  certainly  than 
property  itself. 

N"or,  indeed,  even  when  property  is  the  instrument 
used  to  provide  for  the  future,  is  such  provision  de- 
pendent upon  the  maintenance  in  its  entirety  of  the 
whole  body  of  rights  which  accompany  ownership  to-day. 
Property  is  not  simple  but  complex.  That  of  a  man 
who  has  invested  his  savings  as  an  ordinary  shareholder 
comprises  at  least  three  rights,  the  right  to  interest,  the 
right  to  profits,  the  right  to  control.  In  so  far  as  what 
is  desired  is  the  guarantee  for  the  maintenance  of  a 
stable  income,  not  the  acquisition  of  additional  wealth 
without  labor — in  so  far  as  his  motive  is  not  gain  but 
security — the  need  is  met  by  interest  on  capital.  It  has 
no  necessary  connection  either  with  the  right  to  resid- 
uary profits  or  the  right  to  control  the  management  of 
the  undertaking  from  which  the  profits  are  derived,  both 
of  which  are  vested  to-day  in  the  shareholder.  If  all 
that  were  desired  were  to  use  property  as  an  instrument 
for  purchasing  security,  the  obvious  course — from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  investor  desiring  to  insure  his 
future  the  safest  course — would  be  to  assimilate  his 
position  as  far  as  possible  to  that  of  a  debenture  holder 
or  mortgagee,  who  obtains  the  stable  income  which  is  his 
motive  for  investment,  but  who  neither  incurs  the  risks 
nor  receives  the  profits  of  the  speculator.  To  insist  that 
the  elaborate  apparatus  of  proprietary  rights  which  dis- 


76  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

tributes  dividends  of  thirty  per  cent  to  the  shareholders 
in  Coats,  and  several  thousands  a  year  to  the  owner  of 
mineral  royalties  and  ground-rents,  and  then  allows 
them  to  transmit  the  bulk  of  gains  which  they  have  not 
earned  to  descendants  who  in  their  turn  will  thus  be 
relieved  from  the  necessity  of  earning,  must  be  main- 
tained for  the  sake  of  the  widow  and  the  orphan,  the 
vast  majority  of  whom  have  neither  and  would  gladly 
part  with  them  all  for  a  safe  annuity  if  they  had,  is, 
to  say  the  least  of  it,  extravagantly  mal-d-propos.  It  is 
like  pitching  a  man  into  the  water  because  he  expresses 
a  wish  for  a  bath,  or  ])resenting  a  tiger  cub  to  a  house- 
holder who  is  plagued  with  mice,  on  the  ground  that 
tigers  and  cats  both  belong  to  the  genus  felis.  The  tiger 
hunts  for  itself  not  for  its  masters,  and  when  game  is 
scarce  will  hunt  them.  The  classes  who  own  little  or  no 
property  may  reverence  it  because  it  is  security.  But 
the  classes  who  own  much  prize  it  for  quite  different 
reasons,  and  laugh  in  their  sleeve  at  the  innocence  which 
supposes  that  anything  as  vulgar  as  the  savings  of  the 
petite  bourgeoisie  have,  except  at  elections,  any  interest 
for  them.  They  prize  it  because  it  is  the  order  which 
quarters  them  on  the  community  and  which  provides  for 
the  maintenance  of  a  leisure  class  at  tlie  public  expense. 
"  Possession,"  said  the  Egoist,  '*  without  obligation  to 
the  object  possessed,  approaches  felicity."  Functionless 
property  appears  natural  to  those  who  believe  that  so- 
ciety should  be  organized  for  the  acquisition  of  private 
wealth,  and  attacks  upon  it  perverse  or  malicious,  be- 
cause the  question  which  they  ask  of  any  institution  is, 
"  What  does  it  yield  ?  "     And  «uch  property  yields  much 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    77 

to  those  who  own  it.  Those,  however,  who  hold  that 
social  unity  and  effective  work  are  possible  only  if 
society  is  organized  and  wealth  distributed  on  the  basis 
of  function,  will  ask  of  an  institution,  not,  "  What 
dividends  does  it  pay  ?  "  but  "  What  service  does  it  per- 
form ?  "  To  them  the  fact  that  much  property  yields 
income  irrespective  of  any  service  which  is  performed 
or  obligation  which  is  recognized  by  its  owners  will 
appear  not  a  quality  but  a  vice.  They  will  see  in  the 
social  confusion  which  it  produces,  payments  dispropor- 
tionate to  service  here,  and  payments  without  any  serv- 
ice at  all  there,  and  dissatisfaction  everywhere,  a  con- 
vincing confirmation  of  their  argument  that  to  build  on 
a  foundation  of  rights  and  of  rights  alone  is  to  build  on 
a  quicksand. 

From  the  portentous  exaggeration  into  an  absolute  of 
what  once  was,  and  still  might  be,  a  sane  and  social  in- 
stitution most  other  social  evils  follow  the  power  of 
those  who  do  not  work  over  those  who  do,  the  alternate 
subservience  and  rebelliousness  of  those  who  work  to- 
wards those  who  do  not,  the  starving  of  science  and 
thought  and  creative  effort  for  fear  that  expenditure 
upon  them  should  impinge  on  the  comfort  of  the  slug- 
gard and  the  faineant,  and  the  arrangement  of  society 
in  most  of  its  subsidiary  activities  to  suit  the  conven- 
ience not  of  those  who  work  usefully  but  of  those  who 
spend  gaily,  so  that  the  most  hideous,  desolate  and  par- 
simonious places  in  the  country  are  those  in  which  the 
greatest  wealth  is  produced,  the  Clyde  valley,  or  the 
cotton  towns  of  Lancashire,  or  the  mining  villages  of 
Scotland  and  Wales,  and  the  gayest  and  most  luxurious 


78  TPIE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

those  in  which  it  is  consumed.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  social  health  and  economic  efficiency,  society  should 
obtain  its  material  equipment  at  the  cheapest  price  pos- 
sible, and  after  providing  for  depreciation  and  expan- 
sion should  distribute  the  whole  product  to  its  working 
members  and  their  dependents.  What  happens  at  pres- 
ent, however,  is  that  its  workers  are  hired  at  the  cheap- 
est price  which  the  market  (as  modified  by  organization) 
allows,  and  that  the  surplus,  somewhat  diminished  by 
taxation,  is  distributed  to  the  owners  of  property. 
Profits  may  vary  in  a  given  year  from  a  loss  to  100  per 
cent.  But  wages  are  fixed  at  a  level  which  will  enable 
the  marginal  firm  to  continue  producing  one  year  with 
another;  and  the  surplus,  even  when  due  partly  to 
efficient  management,  goes  neither  to  managers  nor 
manual  workers,  but  to  shareholders.  The  meaning  of 
the  process  becomes  startlingly  apparent  when,  as  in 
Lancashire  to-day,  large  blocks  of  capital  change  hands 
at  a  period  of  abnormal  activity.  The  existing  share- 
holders receive  the  equivalent  of  the  capitalized  expecta- 
tion of  future  profits.  The  workers,  as  workers,  do  not 
participate  in  the  immense  increment  in  value;  and 
when,  in  the  future,  they  demand  an  advance  in  wages, 
they  will  be  met  by  the  answer  that  profits,  which  before 
the  transaction  would  have  been  reckoned  large,  yield 
shareholders  after  it  only  a  low  rate  of  interest  on  their 
investment. 

The  truth  is  that  whereas  in  earlier  ages  the  pro- 
tection of  property  was  normally  tlir-  protection  of  work, 
the  relationship  between  them  has  come  in  the  course  of 
tlio  economic  dcvolopniont  of  the  last  two  centuries  to 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK     79 

be  very  nearly  reversed.  The  two  elements  which  com- 
pose civilization  are  active  effort  and  passive  property, 
the  labor  of  human  things  and  the  tools  which  human 
beings  use.  Of  these  two  elements  those  who  supply 
the  first  maintain  and  improve  it,  those  who  own  the 
second  normally  dictate  its  character,  its  development 
and  its  administration.  Hence,  though  politically  free, 
the  mass  of  mankind  live  in  effect  under  rules  imposed 
to  protect  the  interests  of  the  small  section  among  them 
whose  primary  concern  is  ownership.  From  this  sub- 
ordination of  creative  activity  to  passive  property,  the 
worker  who  depends  upon  his  brains,  the  organizer,  in- 
ventor, teacher  or  doctor  suffers  almost  as  much  embar- 
rassment as  the  craftsman.  The  real  economic  cleavage 
is  not,  as  is  often  said,  between  employers  and  employed, 
but  between  all  who  do  constructive  work,  from  scientist 
to  laborer,  on  the  one  hand,  and  all  whose  main  interest 
is  the  presentation  of  existing  proprietary  rights  upon 
the  other,  irrespective  of  whether  they  contribute  to  con- 
structive work  or  not. 

If,  therefore,  under  the  modern  conditions  which  have 
concentrated  any  substantial  share  of  property  in  the 
hands  of  a  small  minority  of  the  population,  the  world 
is  to  be  governed  for  the  advantages  of  those  who  own, 
it  is  only  incidentally  and  by  accident  that  the  results 
will  be  agreeable  to  those  who  work.  In  practice  there 
is  a  constant  collision  between  them.  Turned  into  an- 
other channel,  half  the  wealth  distributed  in  dividends 
to  functionless  shareholders,  could  secure  every  child  a 
good  education  up  to  18,  could  re-endow  English  Uni- 
versities, and    (since  more  efficient  production  is  im- 


so  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

pnrtant)  could  equip  English  industric-3  for  more  ef- 
ficient production.  Half  the  ingenuity  now  applied  to 
the  protection  of  property  could  have  made  mo5t  indus- 
trial diseases  as  rare  as  smallpox,  and  most  English 
cities  into  places  of  health  and  even  of  beauty.  What 
stands  in  the  way  is  the  doctrine  that  the  right.s  of  prop- 
erty are  absolute,  irrespective  of  any  social  function 
which  its  owners  may  perform.  So  the  laws  which  are 
most  stringently  enforced  arc  still  the  laws  which  pro- 
tect property,  though  the  protection  of  property  is  no 
longer  likely  to  be  equivalent  to  the  protection  of  work, 
and  the  interests  which  govern  industry  and  predomi- 
nate in  public  affairs  are  proprietary  interests.  A  mill- 
owner  may  poison  or  mangle  a  generation  of  operatives ; 
but  his  brother  magistrates  will  let  him  off  with  a  cau- 
tion or  a  nominal  fine  to  poison  and  mangle  the  next. 
For  he  is  an  owner  of  property.  A  landowner  may 
draw  rents  from  slums  in  which  young  children  die  at 
the  rate  of  200  per  1000 ;  but  he  will  be  none  tlie  less 
welcome  in  polite  society.  For  property  has  no  obliga- 
tions and  therefore  can  do  no  wrong.  Urban  land  may 
be  held  from  the  market  on  the  outskirts  of  cities  in 
which  human  beings  arc  living  three  to  a  room,  and 
rural  land  may  be  used  for  sport  when  villagers  are 
leaving  it  to  overcrowd  them  still  more.  No  public 
authority  intervenes,  for  both  are  property.  To  those 
who  believe  that  institutions  which  repudiate  all  moral 
significance  must  sooner  or  later  collapse,  a  society 
which  confuses  the  protection  of  property  with  the  pres- 
ervation of  its  functionless  per\'ersions  will  appear  aa 
precarious  as  that  which  has  left  the  memorials  of  its 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    81 

tasteless  frivolity  and  more  tasteless  ostentation  in  the 
gardens  of  Versailles. 

Do  men  love  peace  ?  They  will  see  the  greatest  enemy 
of  social  unity  in  rights  which  involve  no  obligation 
to  co-operate  for  the  service  of  society.  Do  they  value 
equality  ?  Property  rights  which  dispense  their  owners 
from  the  common  human  necessity  of  labor  make  in- 
equality an  institution  permeating  every  corner  of 
society,  from  the  distribution  of  material  wealth  to  the 
training  of  intellect  itself.  Do  they  desire  greater  in- 
dustrial efficiency  ?  There  is  no  more  fatal  obstacle  to 
efficiency  than  the  revelation  that  idleness  has  the  same 
privileges  as  industry,  and  that  for  every  additional 
blow  with  the  pick  or  hammer  an  additional  profit 
will  be  distributed  among  shareholders  who  wield 
neither. 

Indeed,  functionless  property  is  the  greatest  enemy  of 
legitimate  property  itself.  It  is  the  parasite  which  kills 
the  organism  that  produced  it.  Bad  money  drives  out 
good,  and,  as  the  history  of  the  last  two  hundred  years 
shows,  when  property  for  acquisition  or  power  and  prop- 
erty for  service  or  for  use  jostle  each  other  freely  in 
the  market,  without  restrictions  such  as  some  legal  sys- 
tems have  imposed  on  alienation  and  inheritance,  the 
latter  tends  normally  to  be  absorbed  by  the  former,  be- 
cause it  has  less  resisting  power.  Thus  functionless 
property  grows,  and  as  it  grows  it  undermines  the  crea- 
tive energy  which  produced  property  and  which  in 
earlier  ages  it  protected.  It  cannot  unite  men,  for 
what  unites  them  is  the  bond  of  service  to  a  common 
purpose,   and  that  bond   it   repudiates,  since  its  very 


82  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

essence  is  the  maintenance  of  rights  irrespective  of 
service.  It  cannot  create;  it  can  only  spend,  so  that 
the  number  of  scientists,  inventors,  artists  or  men  of 
letters  who  have  sprung  in  the  course  of  the  last  cen- 
tury from  hereditary  riches  can  be  numbered  on  one 
hand.  It  values  neither  culture  nor  beauty,  but  only 
the  power  which  belongs  to  wealth  and  the  ostentation 
which  is  the  symbol  of  it. 

So  those  who  dread  these  qualities,  energy  and 
thought  and  the  creative  spirit — and  they  are  many — 
will  not  discriminate,  as  we  have  tried  to  discriminate, 
between  different  types  and  kinds  of  property,  in  order 
that  they  may  preserve  those  which  are  legitimate  and 
abolish  those  which  are  not.  They  will  endeavor  to  pre- 
serve all  private  property,  even  in  its  most  degenerate 
forms.  And  those  who  value  those  things  will  try  to 
promote  them  by  relieving  property  of  its  perversions, 
and  thus  enabling  it  to  return  to  its  true  nature.  They 
will  not  desire  to  establish  any  visionary  communism, 
for  they  will  realize  that  the  free  disposal  of  a  sufficiency 
of  personal  possessions  is  the  condition  of  a  healthy  and 
self-respecting  life,  and  will  seek  to  distribute  niorr 
widely  the  property  rights  which  make  them  to-day  the 
privilege  of  a  minority.  But  they  will  refuse  to  submit 
to  the  naive  philosophy  which  would  treat  all  proprie- 
tary rights  as  equal  in  sanctity  merely  because  they  are 
identical  in  name.  They  will  distinguish  sharply  be- 
tween property  which  is  used  by  its  owner  for  the  con- 
duct of  his  profession  or  the  upkeep  of  his  household, 
and  property  which  is  merely  a  claim  on  wealth  pro- 
duced by  another's  labor.     They  will  insist  that  prop- 


PROPERTY  AND  CREATIVE  WORK    83 

erty  is  moral  and  healthy  only  when  it  is  used  as  a  con- 
dition not  of  idleness  but  of  activity,  and  when  it  in- 
volves the  discharge  of  definite  personal  obligations. 
They  will  endeavor,  in  short,  to  base  it  upon  the  prin- 
ciple of  function. 


VI 

THE  FUNCTIONAL  SOCIETY 

The  applieatiou  to  property  and  industry  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  function  is  compatible  with  several  different 
types  of  social  organization,  and  is  as  unlikely  as  more 
important  revelations  to  he  the  secret  of  those  who  cry 
"  Lo  here !  "  and  "  Lo  there !  "  The  essential  thing  is 
that  men  should  fix  their  minds  upon  the  idea  of  pur- 
pose, and  give  that  idea  pre-eminence  over  all  subsidiary 
issues.  If.  as  is  patent,  the  ])ur]wse  of  industry  is  to 
provide  the  material  foundation  of  a  good  social  life, 
then  any  measure  which  makes  that  provision  more  ef- 
fective, so  long  as  it  does  not  conflict  with  some  still 
more  important  purpose,  is  wise,  and  any  institution 
which  thwarts  or  encumbers  it  is  foolish.  It  is  foolish, 
fur  e.\aiu])le,  to  cripple  education,  as  it  is  crippled  in 
Enghind  for  the  sake  of  industry;  for  one  of  the  uses  of 
industry  is  to  provide  the  wealth  which  may  make  pos- 
sible better  education.  It  is  foolish  to  maintain  prop- 
erty rights  for  which  no  service  is  performed,  for  pay- 
ment without  service  is  waste;  and  if  it  is  true,  as 
statisticians  affirm,  that,  oven  were  income  eqiuilly  di- 
vided, income  per  head  would  he  small,  then  it  is  all 
the  more  foolish,  for  sailors  in  a  boat  have  no  room  for 
first-class  passengers,  and  it  is  all  the  more  important 
that  none  of  the  small  national  ineouie  should  Ix*  mis- 
applied.    It  is  foolish  to  leave  the  direction  of  industry 

84 


THE  FUNCTIONAL  SOCIETY  85 

in  the  hands  of  servants  of  private  property-owners  who 
themselves  know  nothing  about  it  but  its  balance  sheets, 
because  this  is  to  divert  it  from  the  performance  of 
service  to  the  acquisition  of  gain,  and  to  subordinate 
those  who  do  creative  work  to  those  who  do  not. 

The  course  of  wisdom  in  the  affairs  of  industry  is, 
after  all,  what  it  is  in  any  other  department  of  organ- 
ized life.  It  is  to  consider  the  end  for  which  economic 
activity  is  carried  on  and  then  to  adapt  economic  or- 
ganization to  it.  It  is  to  pay  for  service  and  for 
service  only,  and  when  capital  is  hired  to  make  sure 
that  it  is  hired  at  the  cheapest  possible  price.  It  is  to 
place  the  responsibility  for  organizing  industry  on  the 
shoulders  of  those  who  work  and  use,  not  of  those  who 
own,  because  production  is  the  business  of  the  pro- 
ducer and  the  proper  person  to  see  that  he  discharges 
his  business  is  the  consumer  for  whom,  and  not  for  the 
owner  of  property,  it  ought  to  be  carried  on.  Above  all 
it  is  to  insist  that  all  industries  shall  be  conducted  in 
complete  publicity  as  to  costs  and  profits,  because  pub- 
licity ought  to  be  the  antiseptic  both  of  economic  and 
political  abuses,  and  no  man  can  have  confidence  in  his 
neighbor  unless  both  work  in  the  light. 

As  far  as  property  is  concerned,  such  a  policy  would 
possess  two  edges.  On  the  one  hand,  it  would  aim  at 
abolishing  those  forms  of  property  in  which  o\vnership 
is  divorced  from  obligations.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
would  seek  to  encourage  those  forms  of  economic  organi- 
zation under  which  the  worker,  whether  ovsTier  or  not,  is 
free  to  carry  on  his  work  without  sharing  its  control  or 
its  profits  with  the  mere  rentier.     Thus,  if  in  certain 


86  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

spheres  it  involved  an  extension  of  public  ownership,  it 
would  in  others  foster  an  extension  of  private  prop- 
erty. For  it  is  not  private  ownership,  but  private  owner- 
ship divorced  from  work,  which  is  corrupting  to  the 
principle  of  industry ;  and  the  idea  of  some  socialists 
that  private  property  in  land  or  capital  is  necessarily 
mischievous  is  a  piece  of  scholastic  pedantry  as  absurd 
as  that  of  those  conservatives  who  would  invest  all  prop- 
erty with  some  kind  of  mysterious  sanctity.  It  all  de- 
pends what  sort  of  property  it  is  and  for  what  purpose 
it  is  used.  Provided  that  the  State  retains  its  emi- 
nent domain,  and  controls  alienation,  as  it  does  under 
the  Homestead  laws  of  the  Dominions,  with  sufficient 
stringency  to  prevent  the  creation  of  a  class  of  func- 
tionless  property-owners,  there  is  no  inconsistency  be- 
tween encouraging  simultaneously  a  multiplication  of 
peasant  farmers  and  small  masters  who  own  their  own 
farms  or  shops,  and  the  abolition  of  private  ownership 
in  those  industries,  unfortunately  to-day  the  most  con- 
spicuous, in  which  the  private  owner  is  an  absentee 
shareholder. 

Indeed,  the  second  reform  would  help  the  first.  In  so 
far  as  the  community  tolerates  functionless  property  it 
makes  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  the  restoration  of  the 
small  master  in  agriculture  or  in  industry,  who  cannot 
easily  hold  his  own  in  a  world  dominated  by  great 
estates  or  capitalist  finance.  In  so  far  as  it  abolishes 
those  kinds  of  projxTty  which  are  merely  parasitic,  it 
facilitates  the  restoration  of  the  small  property-owner 
in  those  kinds  of  industry  for  which  small  ownership  is 
adapted.     A  socialistic  policy  towards  the  former  is  not 


THE  FUNCTIONAL  SOCIETY  87 

antagonistic  to  the  "  distributive  state,"  but,  in  modern 
economic  conditions,  a  necessary  preliminary  to  it,  and 
if  by  "  Property "  is  meant  the  personal  possessions 
which  the  word  suggests  to  nine-tenths  of  the  popula- 
tion, the  object  of  socialists  is  not  to  undermine  prop- 
erty but  to  protect  and  increase  it.  The  boundary  be- 
tween large  scale  and  small  scale  production  will  always 
be  uncertain  and  fluctuating,  depending,  as  it  does,  on 
technical  conditions  which  cannot  be  foreseen :  a  cheap- 
ening of  electrical  power,  for  example,  might  result  in 
the  decentralization  of  manufactures,  as  steam  resulted 
in  their  concentration.  The  fundamental  issue,  how- 
ever, is  not  between  different  scales  of  ownership,  but 
between  ownership  of  different  kinds,  not  between  the 
large  farmer  or  master  and  the  small,  but  between  prop- 
erty which  is  used  for  work  and  property  which  yields 
income  without  it.  The  Irish  landlord  was  abolished, 
not  because  he  owned  a  large  scale,  but  because  he  was 
an  owner  and  nothing  more;  if,  and  when  English  landr 
ownership  has  been  equally  attenuated,  as  in  towns  it 
already  has  been,  it  will  deserve  to  meet  the  same  fate. 
Once  the  issue  of  the  character  of  ownership  has  been 
settled,  the  question  of  the  size  of  the  economic  unit  can 
be  left  to  settle  itself. 

-'-*^  The  first  step,  then,  towards  the  organization  of  eco- 
nomic life  for  the  performance  of  function  is  to  abolish 
those  types  of  private  property  in  return  for  which  no 
function  is  performed.  The  man  who  lives  by  awning 
without  working  is  necessarily  supported  by  the  indus- 
try of  some  one  else,  and  is,  therefore,  too  expensive  a 
luxury  to  be  encouraged.     Though  he  deserves   to  be 


88  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

treated  with  the  leniency  which  ought  to  be,  and  usually 
is  not,  shown  to  those  who  have  been  brought  up  from 
infancy  to  any  other  disreputable  trade,  indulgence  to 
individuals  must  not  condone  the  institution  of  v.'hich 
both  they  and  their  neighbors  are  the  victims.  Judged 
by  this  standard,  certain  kinds  of  property  are  obviously 
anti-social.  The  rights  in  virtue  of  which  the  owner  of 
the  surface  is  entitled  to  levy  a  tax,  called  a  royalty, 
on  every  ton  of  coal  which  the  miner  brings  to  the 
surface,  to  levy  another  tax,  called  a  way-leave,  on  every 
ton  of  coal  transported  under  the  surface  of  his  land 
though  its  amenity  and  value  may  be  quite  unaffected, 
to  distort,  if  he  pleases,  the  development  of  a  whole 
district  by  refusing  access  to  the  minerals  except  uj)on 
his  own  terms,  and  to  cause  some  3,500  to  4,000  million 
tons  to  be  wasted  in  barriers  between  different  proper- 
ties, while  he  in  the  meantime  contributes  to  a  chorus 
of  lamentation  over  the  wickedness  of  the  miners  in  not 
producing  more  tons  of  coal  for  the  public  and  inciden- 
tally more  private  taxes  for  himself — all  this  adds  an 
agreeable  touch  of  humor  to  the  drab  quality  of  our  in- 
dustrial civilization  for  which  mineral  owners  deserve 
perhaps  some  recognition,  though  not  the  $400,000  odd 
a  year  which  is  paid  to  each  of  the  four  leading  players, 
or  the  $24,000,000  a  year  which  is  distributed  among 
the  crowd. 

The  alchemy  by  which  a  gentleman  who  has  never 
seen  a  coal  mine  distills  the  contents  of  that  place  of 
gloom  into  elegant  chambers  in  London  and  a  place  in 
the  country  is  not  the  monopoly  of  royalty  owners.  A 
similar    feat    of    presdigitation    is    performed    by    the 


THE  FUNCTIONAL  SOCIETY  89 

cwner  of  urban  ground-rents.  In  rural  districts  some 
landlords,  perhaps  many  landlords,  are  partners  in  the 
hazardous  and  difficult  business  of  agriculture,  and, 
though  they  may  often  exercise  a  power  which  is  socially 
excessive,  the  position  which  they  hold  and  the  income 
which  they  receive  are,  in  part  at  last,  a  return  for 
the  functions  which  they  perform.  The  ownership  of 
urban  land  has  been  refined  till  of  that  crude  ore  only 
the  pure  gold  is  left.  It  is  the  perfect  sinecure,  for  the 
only  function  it  involves  is  that  of  collecting  its  profits, 
and  in  an  age  when  the  struggle  of  Liberalism  against 
sinecures  was  still  sufficiently  recent  to  stir  some  chords 
of  memory,  the  last  and  greatest  of  liberal  thinkers  drew 
the  obvious  deduction.  "  The  reasons  which  form  the 
justification  ...  of  property  in  land,"  wrote  Mill  in 
1848,  "  are  valid  only  in  so  far  as  the  proprietor  of  land 
is  its  improver.  .  .  .  In  no  sound  theory  of  private 
property  was  it  ever  contemplated  that  the  proprietor  of 
land  should  be  merely  a  sinecurist  quartered  on  it." 
Urban  ground-rents  and  royalties  are,  in  fact,  as  the 
Prime  Minister  in  his  unregenerate  days  suggested,  a 
tax  which  some  persons  are  permitted  by  the  law  to  levy 
upon  the  industry  of  others.  They  differ  from  public 
taxation  only  in  that  their  amount  increases  in  propor- 
tion not  to  the  nation's  need  of  revenue  but  to  its  need 
of  the  coal  and  space  on  which  they  are  levied,  that  their 
growth  inures  to  private  gain  not  to  public  benefit,  and 
that  if  the  proceeds  are  wasted  on  frivolous  expenditure 
no  one  has  any  right  to  complain,  because  the  arrange- 
ment by  which  Lord  Smith  spends  wealth  produced  by 
Mr.  Brown  on  objects  which  do  no  good  to  either  is  part 


90  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

of  the  system  which,  under  the  name  of  private  prop- 
erty, Mr.  Brown  as  well  as  Lord  Smith  have  h^arned  to 
regard  as  essential  to  the  higher  welfare  of  mankind. 

But  if  we  accept  the  principle  of  function  we  shall 
ask  what  is  the  purpose  of  this  arrangement,  and  for 
what  end  the  inhabitants  of,  for  example,  London  pay 
$04,000,000  a  year  to  their  ground  landlords.  And  if 
we  find  that  it  is  for  no  purpose  and  no  end,  but  that 
these  things  are  like  the  horseshoes  and  nails  which 
the  City  of  London  presents  to  the  Crown  on  account  of 
land  in  the  Parish  of  St.  Clement  Danes,  then  we  shall 
not  deal  harshly  with  a  quaint  historical  survival,  but 
neither  shall  we  allow  it  to  distract  us  from  the  busi- 
ness of  the  present,  as  though  there  had  been  history 
but  there  were  not  history  any  longer.  We  shall  close 
these  channels  through  which  wealth  leaks  away  by  re- 
suming the  ownership  of  minerals  and  of  urban  land, 
as  some  communities  in  the  British  Dominions  and  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe  have  resumed  it  already.  We 
shall  secure  that  such  large  accumulations  as  remain 
change  hands  at  least  once  in  every  generation,  by  in- 
creasing our  taxes  on  inheritance  till  what  passes  to  the 
heir  is  little  more  than  personal  possessions,  not  the 
right  to  a  tribute  from  industry  which,  though  quali- 
fied by  death-duties,  is  what  the  son  of  a  rich  man  in- 
herits to-day.  We  shall  treat  mineral  owners  and  land- 
owners, in  sliort,  as  Plato  would  have  treated  the  poets, 
whom  in  their  ability  to  make  something  out  of  noth- 
ing and  to  bewitch  mankind  with  words  they  a  little 
resemble,  and  frown  them  with  flowers  and  usher  them 
politely  out  of  the  State. 


VII 

INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION 

Rights  without  functions  are  like  the  shades  in  Homer 
which  drank  blood  but  scattered  trembling  at  the  voice 
of  a  man.  To  extinguish  royalties  and  urban  ground- 
rents  is  merely  to  explode  a  superstition.  It  needs  as 
little — and  as  much — resolution  as  to  put  one's  hand 
through  any  other  ghost.  In  all  industries  except  the 
diminishing  number  in  which  the  capitalist  is  himself 
the  manager,  property  in  capital  is  almost  equally  pas- 
sive. Almost,  but  not  quite.  For,  though  the  majority 
of  its  owners  do  not  themselves  exercise  any  positive 
function,  they  appoint  those  who  do.  It  is  true,  of 
course,  that  the  question  of  how  capital  is  to  be  owned 
is  distinct  from  the  question  of  how  it  is  to  be  admin- 
istered, and  that  the  former  can  be  settled  without 
prejudice  to  the  latter.  To  infer,  because  shareholders 
own  capital  which  is  indispensable  to  industry,  that 
therefore  industry  is  dependent  upon  the  maintenance 
of  capital  in  the  hands  of  shareholders,  to  write,  with 
some  economists,  as  though,  if  private  property  in  capi- 
tal were  further  attenuated  or  abolished  altogether,  the 
constructive  energy  of  the  managers  who  may  own  capi- 
tal or  may  not,  but  rarely,  in  the  more  important  indus- 
tries, own  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  it,  must  neces- 
sarily be  impaired,  is  to  be  guilty  of  a  robust 
non-sequitur  and  to  ignore  the  most  obvious  facts  of 

91 


92  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

contemporary  indiistrv.  The  loss  the  mere  capitalist 
talks  about  the  necessity  for  the  cousimier  of  an  efficient 
organization  of  industry,  the  better;  for,  whatever  the 
future  of  industry  may  be,  an  efficient  orphan izat ion  is 
likely  to  have  no  room  for  him.  But  though  share- 
holders do  not  govern,  they  reign,  at  least  to  the  extent 
of  saying  once  a  year  "  Ic  roy  le  veult."  If  their  rights 
are  pared  down  or  extinguished,  the  necessity  for  some 
organ  to  exercise  them  will  still  remain.  And  the  ques- 
tion of  the  ownership  of  capital  has  this  much  in  com- 
mon with  the  question  of  industrial  organization,  that 
the  problem  of  tlio  constitution  under  which  industry 
is  to  be  conducted  is  common  to  both. 

That  constitution  must  be  sought  by  considering  how 
industry  can  be  organized  to  express  most  perfectly  the 
principle  of  purpose.  The  application  to  industry  of 
the  principle  of  purpose  is  simple,  however  difficult  it 
may  be  to  give  effect  to  it.  It  is  to  turn  it  into  a  Pro- 
fession. A  Profession  may  be  defined  most  simply  as 
a  trade  which  is  organized,  inct)mpletely,  no  doubt,  but 
genuinely,  for  the  {x-rforniance  of  function.  It  is  not 
simply  a  collection  of  individuals  who  get  a  living  for 
themselves  by  the  same  kind  of  work.  Nor  is  it  merely 
a  group  which  is  organized  exclusively  for  the  economic 
protection  of  its  members,  though  that  is  normally 
among  its  purposes.  It  is  a  body  of  men  who  carry  on 
their  work  in  accordance  with  rules  designed  to  enforce 
certain  standards  both  for  the  better  protection  of  its 
members  and  for  the  better  service  of  the  public.  The 
standards  which  it  maintains  may  be  high  or  low:  all 
professions  have  some  rules  which  protect  the  interests 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  93 

of  the  community  and  others  which  are  an  imposition  on 
it.  Its  essence  is  that  it  assumes  certain  responsibilities 
for  the  competence  of  its  members  or  the  quality  of  its 
wares,  and  that  it  deliberately  prohibits  certain  kinds 
of  conduct  on  the  ground  that,  though  they  may  be 
profitable  to  the  individual,  they  are  calculated  to  bring 
into  disrepute  the  organization  to  which  he  belongs. 
While  some  of  its  rules  are  trade  union  regulations  de- 
signed primarily  to  prevent  the  economic  standards  of 
the  profession  being  lowered  by  unscrupulous  competi- 
tion, others  have  as  their  main  object  to  secure  that  no 
member  of  the  profession  shall  have  any  but  a  purely 
professional  interest  in  his  work,  by  excluding  the  in- 
centive of  speculative  profit. 

The  conception  implied  in  the  words  "  unprofessional 
conduct "  is,  therefore,  the  exact  opposite  of  the  theory 
and  practice  which  assume  that  the  service  of  the  public 
is  best  secured  by  the  unrestricted  pursuit  on  the  part 
of  rival  traders  of  their  pecuniary  self-interest,  within 
such  limits  as  the  law  allows.  It  is  significant  that  at 
the  time  when  the  professional  classes  had  deified  free 
competition  as  the  arbiter  of  commerce  and  industry, 
they  did  not  dream  of  applying  it  to  the  occupations  in 
which  they  themselves  were  primarily  interested,  but 
maintained,  and  indeed,  elaborated  machinery  through 
which  a  professional  conscience  might  find  expression. 
The  rules  themselves  may  sometimes  appear  to  the  lay- 
man arbitrary  and  ill-conceived.  But  their  object  is 
clear.  It  is  to  impose  on  the  profession  itself  the  obliga- 
tion of  maintaining  the  quality  of  the  service,  and  to 
prevent  its  common  purpose  being  frustrated  through 


94  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

the  undue  influence  of  the  motive  of  pecuniary  gain 
upon  the  necessities  or  cupidity  of  the  individual. 

The  difference  between  industry  as  it  exists  to-day 
and  a  profession  is,  then,  simple  and  unmistakable. 
The  essence  of  the  former  is  that  its  only  criterion  is 
the  financial  return  which  it  offers  to  its  shareholders. 
The  essence  of  the  latter,  is  that,  though  men  enter  it 
for  the  sake  of  livelihood,  the  measure  of  their  success 
is  the  service  which  they  perform,  not  the  gains  which 
they  amass.  They  may,  as  in  the  case  of  a  successful 
doctor,  grow  rich ;  but  the  meaning  of  their  profession, 
both  for  themselves  and  for  the  public,  is  not  that  they 
make  money  but  that  they  make  health,  or  safety,  or 
knowledge,  or  good  government  or  good  law.  They 
depend  on  it  for  their  income,  but  they  do  not  consider 
that  any  conduct  which  increases  their  income  is  on 
that  account  good.  And  while  a  boot-manufacturer  who 
retires  with  half  a  million  is  counted  to  have  achieved 
success,  whether  the  boots  which  he  made  were  of 
leather  or  brown  paper,  a  civil  servant  who  did  the 
same  would  be  impeached. 

So,  if  they  are  doctors,  they  recognize  that  there  are 
certain  kinds  of  conduct  which  cannot  be  i)ractiscd, 
however  large  the  fee  offered  for  them,  because  they 
are  unprofessional ;  if  scholars  and  teachers,  that  it  is 
wrong  to  make  money  by  deliberately  deceiving  the 
public,  as  is  done  by  makers  of  patent  medicines,  how- 
ever much  the  public  may  clamor  to  be  deceived ;  if 
judges  or  public  servants,  that  they  must  not  increase 
their  incomes  by  selling  justice  for  money;  if  soldiers, 
that  the  service  comes  first,  and  their  j)rivate  inclina- 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  95 

tions,  even  the  reasonable  preference  of  life  to  death, 
second.  Every  country  has  its  traitors,  every  army  its 
deserters,  and  every  profession  its  blacklegs.  To  idealize 
the  professional  spirit  would  be  very  absurd ;  it  has  its 
sordid  side,  and,  if  it  is  to  be  fostered  in  industry,  safe- 
guards will  be  needed  to  check  its  excesses.  But  there 
is  all  the  difference  between  maintaining  a  standard 
which  is  occasionally  abandoned,  and  aflBrming  as  the 
central  truth  of  existence  that  there  is  no  standard  to 
maintain.  The  meaning  of  a  profession  is  that  it  makes 
the  traitors  the  exception,  not  as  they  are  in  industry, 
the  rule.  It  makes  them  the  exception  by  upholding  as 
the  criterion  of  success  the  end  for  which  the  profession, 
whatever  it  may  be,  is  carried  on,  and  subordinating  the 
inclination,  appetites  and  ambitions  of  individuals  to 
the  rules  of  an  organization  which  has  as  its  object  to 
promote  the  performance  of  function. 

There  is  no  sharp  line  between  the  professions  and 
the  industries.  A  hundred  years  ago  the  trade  of  teach- 
ing, which  to-day  is  on  the  whole  an  honorable  public 
service,  was  rather  a  vulgar  speculation  upon  public 
credulity ;  if  Mr.  Squeers  was  a  caricature,  the  Oxford 
of  Gibbon  and  x\dam  Smith  was  a  solid  port-fed  reality ; 
no  local  authority  could  have  performed  one-tenth  of 
the  duties  which  are  carried  out  by  a  modern  municipal 
corporation  every  day,  because  there  was  no  body  of 
public  servants  to  perform  them,  and  such  as  there  were  ■ 
took  bribes.  It  is  conceivable,  at  least,  that  some 
branches  of  medicine  might  have  developed  on  the  lines 
of  industrial   capitalism,   with    hospitals   as   factories. 


96  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

doctors  hired  at  competitive  wages  as  their  "  hands," 
large  dividends  paid  to  shareholders  by  catering  for  the 
rich,  and  the  poor,  who  do  not  offer  a  profitable  market, 
supplied  with  an  inferior  service  or  with  no  service  at 
all. 

The  idea  that  there  is  some  mysterious  difference 
between  making  munitions  of  war  and  firing  them,  be- 
tween building  schools  and  teaching  in  them  when  built, 
between  providing  food  and  providing  health,  which 
makes  it  at  once  inevitable  and  laudable  that  the  former 
should  be  carried  on  with  a  single  eye  to  pecuniary  gain, 
while  the  latter  are  conducted  by  professional  men  who 
expect  to  be  paid  for  service  but  who  neither  watch  for 
windfalls  nor  raise  their  fees  merely  because  there  are 
more  sick  to  be  cured,  more  children  to  be  taught,  or 
more  enemies  to  be  resisted,  is  an  illusion  only  less 
astonishing  than  that  the  leaders  of  industry  should 
welcome  the  insult  as  an  honor  and  wear  their  humilia- 
tion as  a  kind  of  halo.  The  work  of  making  boots  or 
building  a  house  is  in  itself  no  more  degrading  than 
that  of  curing  the  sick  or  teaching  the  ignorant.  It  is 
as  necessary  and  therefore  as  honorable.  It  should  be 
at  least  equally  bound  by  rules  which  have  as  their 
object  to  maintain  the  standards  of  professional  serv- 
ice. It  should  be  at  least  equally  free  from  the 
vulgar  subordination  of  moral  standards  to  financial 
interests. 

If  industry  is  to  be  organized  as  a  profession,  two 
changes  are  requisite,  one  negative  and  one  positive. 
The  first,  is  that  it  should  cease  to  be  conducted  by  the 
agents  of  property-owners  for  the  advantage  of  property- 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  97 

owners,  and  should  be  carried  on,  instead,  for  the  service 
of  the  public.  The  second,  is  that,  subject  to  rigorous 
public  supervision,  the  responsibility  for  the  mainte-  ' 
nance  of  the  service  should  rest  upon  the  shoulders  of 
those,  from  organizer  and  scientist  to  laborer,  by  whom, 
'in  effect,  the  work  is  conducted. 

The  first  change  is  necessary  because  the  conduct  of 
industry  for  the  public  advantage  is  impossible  as  long 
as  the  ultimate  authority  over  its  management  is  vested 
in  those  whose  only  connection  with  it,  and  interest  in  ' 
it,  is  the  pursuit  of  gain.  As  industry  is  at  present 
organized,  its  profits  and  its  control  belong  by  law  to 
that  element  in  it  which  has  least  to  do  with  its  suc- 
cess. Under  the  joint-stock  organization  which  has 
become  normal  in  all  the  more  important  industries 
except  agriculture,  it  is  managed  by  the  salaried  agents 
of  those  by  whom  the  property  is  owned.  It  is  success- 
ful if  it  returns  largs  sums  to  shareholders,  and  un- 
successful if  it  does  not.  If  an  opportunity  presents 
itself  to  increase  dividends  by  practices  which  deterio- 
rate the  service  or  degrade  the  workers,  the  officials  who 
administer  industry  act  strictly  within  their  duty  if  they 
seize  it,  for  they  are  the  servants  of  their  employers, 
and  their  obligation  to  their  employers  is  to  provide 
dividends  not  to  provide  service.  But  the  owners  of 
the  property  are,  qua  property-owners  functionless,  not 
in  the  sense,  of  course,  that  the  tools  of  which  they  are 
proprietors  are  not  useful,  but  in  the  sense  that  since 
work  and  ownership  are  increasingly  separated,  the  ef- 
ficient use  of  the  tools  is  not  dependent  on  the  main- 
tenance of  the  proprietary  rights  exercised  over  their 


98  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

Of  course  there  are  many  managing  directors  who  both 
own  capital  and  administer  the  business.  But  it  is 
none  the  less  the  case  that  most  shareholders  in  most 
large  industries  are  normally  shareholders  and  nothing 
more. 

Nor  is  their  economic  interest  identical,  as  is  some- 
times assumed,  with  that  of  the  general  public.  A 
society  is  rich  when  material  goods,  including  capital, 
are  cheap,  and  human  beings  dear:  indeed  the  word 
"  riches  "  has  no  other  meaning.  The  interest  of  those 
who  own  the  property  used  in  industry,  though  not,  of 
course,  of  the  managers  who  administer  industry  and 
who  themselves  are  servants,  and  often  very  ill-paid 
servants  at  that,  is  that  their  capital  should  be  dear 
and  human  beings  cheap.  Hence,  if  the  industry  is  such 
as  to  yield  a  considerable  return,  or  if  one  unit  in  the 
industry,  owing  to  some  special  advantage,  produces 
more  cheaply  than  its  neighbors,  while  selling  at  the 
same  price,  or  if  a  revival  of  trade  raises  prices,  or  if 
supplies  are  controlled  by  one  of  the  combines  which 
are  now  the  rule  in  many  of  the  more  important  in- 
dustries, the  resulting  surplus  normally  passes  neither  to 
the  managers,  nor  to  the  other  employees,  nor  to  the 
public,  but  to  the  shareholders.  Such  an  arrangement  is 
preposterous  in  the  literal  sense  of  being  the  reverse  of 
that  which  would  be  established  by  considerations  of 
equity  and  common  sense,  and  gives  rise  (among  other 
things)  to  what  is  called  "  the  struggle  between  labor 
and  capital."  The  phrase  is  apposite,  since  it  is  as 
absurd  as  the  relations  of  which  it  is  intended  to  be  a 
description.     To  deplore  ''  ill-feeling  "  or  to  ndvocate 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  99 

"  harmony  "  between  "  labor  and  capital  "  is  as  rational 
as  to  lament  the  bitterness  between  carpenters  and  ham- 
mers or  to  promote  a  mission  for  restoring  amity  be- 
tween mankind  and  its  boots.  The  only  significance  of 
these  cliches  is  that  their  repetition  tends  to  muffle  their 
inanity,  even  to  the  point  of  persuading  sensible  men 
that  capital  "  employs  "  labor,  much  as  our  pagan  an- 
cestors imagined  that  the  other  pieces  of  wood  and  iron, 
which  they  deified  in  their  day,  sent  their  crops  and  won 
their  battles.  When  men  have  gone  so  far  as  to  talk 
as  though  their  idols  have  come  to  life,  it  is  time  that 
some  one  broke  them.  Labor  consists  of  persons,  capi- 
tal of  things.  The  only  use  of  things  is  to  be  applied 
to  the  service  of  persons.  The  business  of  persons  is 
to  see  that  they  are  there  to  use,  and  that  no  more  than 
need  be  is  paid  for  using  them. 

Thus  the  application  to  industry  of  the  principle  of 
function  involves  an  alteration  of  proprietary  rights, 
because  those  rights  do  not  contribute,  as  they  now  are, 
to  the  end  which  industry  exists  to  serve.  What  gives 
unity  to  any  activity,  what  alone  can  reconcile  the  con- 
flicting claims  of  the  different  groups  engaged  in  it,  is 
the  purpose  for  which  it  is  carried  on.  If  men  have  no 
common  goal  it  is  no  wonder  that  they  should  fall  out 
by  the  way,  nor  are  they  likely  to  be  reconciled  by  a 
redistribution  of  their  provisions.  If  they  are  not  con- 
tent both  to  be  servants,  one  or  other  must  be  master, 
and  it  is  idle  to  suppose  that  mastership  can  be  held  in 
a  state  of  suspense  between  the  two.  There  can  be  a 
division  of  functions  between  different  grades  of 
workers,  or  between  worker  and  consumer,  and  each  can 


100  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

have  in  his  own  sphere  the  authority  needed  to  enable 
him  to  fill  it.  But  there  cannot  be  a  division  of  func- 
tions between  the  worker  and  the  owner  who  is  owner 
and  nothing  else,  for  what  function  does  such  an  owner 
perform  ?  The  provision  of  capital  ?  Then  pay  him  the 
sum  needed  to  secure  the  use  of  his  capital,  but  neither 
pay  him  more  nor  admit  him  to  a  position  of  authority 
over  production  for  which  merely  as  an  owner  he  is  not 
qualified.  For  this  reason,  while  an  equilibrium  be- 
tween worker  and  manager  is  possible,  because  both  are 
workers,  that  which  it  is  sought  to  establish  between 
worker  and  owner  is  not^  It  is  like  the  proposal  of  the 
Germans  to  negotiate  with  Belgium  from  Brussels. 
Their  proposals  may  be  excellent:  but  it  is  not  evident 
why  they  are  where  they  are,  or  how,  since  they 
do  not  contribute  to  production,  they  come  to  be  put- 
ting forward  proposals  at  all.  As  long  as  they  are 
in  territory  where  they  have  no  business  to  be, 
their  excellence  as  individuals  will  be  overlooked  in 
annoyance  at  the  system  which  puts  them  where  they 
are. 

It  is  fortunate  indeed,  if  nothing  worse  than  this 
happens.  For  one  way  of  solving  the  problem  of  the 
conflict  of  rights  in  industry  is  not  to  base  rights  on 
functions,  as  we  propose,  but  to  base  them  on  force.  It 
is  to  re-establish  in  some  veiled  and  decorous  form  the 
institution  of  slavery,  by  making  labor  compulsory.  In 
nearly  all  countries  a  concerted  refusal  to  work  has  been 
made  at  one  time  or  another  a  eriuilTial  ofTense.  There 
are  to-day  parts  of  the  world  in  which  Kuro|)can  capi- 
talists, unchecked  by  any  public  o])inion  or  authority 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  101 

independent  of  themselves,  are  free  to  impose  almost 
what  terms  they  please  upon  workmen  of  ignorant  and 
helpless  races.  In  those  districts  of  America  where  capi- 
talism still  retains  its  primitive  lawlessness,  the  same 
result  appears  to  be  produced  upon  immigrant  workmen 
by  the  threat  of  violence. 

In  such  circumstances  the  conflict  of  rights  which 
finds  expression  in  industrial  warfare  does  not  arise, 
because  the  rights  of  one  party  have  been  extinguished. 
The  simplicity  of  the  remedy  is  so  attractive  that  it  is 
not  surprising  that  the  Governments  of  industrial  na- 
tions should  coquet  from  time  to  time  with  the  policy 
of  compulsory  arbitration.  After  all,  it  is  pleaded,  it 
is  only  analogous  to  the  action  of  a  supernational  au- 
thority which  should  use  its  common  force  to  prevent 
the  outbreak  of  war.  In  reality,  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion is  the  opposite  of  any  policy  which  such  an  author- 
ity could  pursue  either  with  justice  or  with  hope  of 
success.  For  it  takes  for  granted  the  stability  of  exist- 
ing relationships  and  intervenes  to  adjust  incidental  dis- 
putes upon  the  assumption  that  their  equity  is  recog- 
nized and  their  permanence  desired.  In  industry,  how- 
ever, the  equity  of  existing  relationships  is  precisely  the 
point  at  issue.  A  League  of  Nations  which  adjusted  be- 
tween a  subject  race  and  its  oppressors,  between  Slavs 
and  Magyars,  or  the  inhabitants  of  what  was  once 
Prussian  Poland  and  the  Prussian  Government,  on  the 
assumption  that  the  subordination  of  Slavs  to  Magyars 
and  Poles  to  Prussians  was  part  of  an  unchangeable 
order,  would  rightly  be  resisted  by  all  those  who  think 
liberty  more  precious  than  peace.    A  State  which,  in  the 


102  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

name  of  peace,  should  make  the  concerted  cessation  of 
work  a  legal  offense  would  be  guilty  of  a  similar  be- 
trayal of  freedom.  It  would  be  solving  the  conflict  of 
rights  between  those  who  own  and  those  "who  work  by 
abolishing  the  rights  of  those  who  work. 

So  here  again,  unless  we  are  prepared  to  re-establish 
some  form  of  forced  labor,  we  reach  an  impasse.  But 
it  is  an  impasse  only  in  so  long  as  we  regard  the  pro- 
prietary rights  of  those  who  own  the  capital  used  in 
industry  as  absolute  and  an  end  in  themselves.  If,  in- 
stead of  assuming  that  all  property,  merely  because  it 
is  property,  is  equally  sacred,  we  ask  what  is  the  pur- 
pose for  which  capital  is  used,  what  is  its  function,  we 
shall  realize  that  it  is  not  an  end  but  a  means  to  an  end, 
and  that  its  function  is  to  serve  and  assist  (as  the 
economists  tell  us)  the  labor  of  human  beings,  not  the 
function  of  human  beings  to  serve  those  who  happen  to 
own  it.  And  from  this  truth  two  consequences  follow. 
The  first  is  that  since  capital  is  a  thing,  which  ought 
to  be  used  to  help  industry  as  a  man  may  use  a  bicycle 
to  get  more  quickly  to  his  work,  it  ought,  when  it  is 
employed,  to  be  employed  on  the  cheapest  terms  pos- 
sible. The  second  is  that  those  who  own  it  should  no 
more  control  production  than  a  man  who  lets  a  house 
controls  the  meals  which  shall  be  cooked  in  the  kitchen, 
or  the  man  who  lets  a  boat  the  speed  at  which  the 
rowers  shall  pull.  In  other  words,  capital  should  always 
be  got  at  cost  price,  which  means,  unless  the  State  finds 
it  wise,  as  it  very  well  may,  to  own  the  capital  used  in 
certain  industries,  it  should  be  paid  the  lowest  interest 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  103 

for  which  it  can  be  obtained,  but  should  carry  no  right 
either  to  residuary  dividends  or  to  the  control  of  in- 
dustry. 

There  are,  in  theory,  five  ways  by  which  the  control 
of  industry  by  the  agents  of  private  property-owners  can 
be  terminated.  They  may  be  expropriated  without  com- 
pensation. They  may  voluntarily  surrender  it.  They 
may  be  frozen  out  by  action  on  the  part  of  the  working 
'personnel,  which  itself  undertakes  such  functions,  if 
any,  as  they  have  performed,  and  makes  them  super- 
fluous by  conducting  production  without  their  assist- 
ance. Their  proprietary  interest  may  be  limited  or  at- 
tenuated to  such  a  degree  that  they  become  mere 
rentiers,  who  are  guaranteed  a  fixed  payment  analogous 
to  that  of  the  debenture-holder,  but  who  receive  no 
profits  and  bear  no  responsibility  for  the  organization  of 
industry.  They  may  be  bought  out.  The  first  alterna- 
tive is  exemplified  by  the  historical  confiscations  of  the 
past,  such  as,  for  instance,  by  the  seizure  of  ecclesiastical 
property  by  the  ruling  classes  of  England,  Scotland  and 
most  other  Protestant  states.  The  second  has  rarely,  if 
ever,  been  tried — the  nearest  approach  to  it,  perhaps, 
was  the  famous  abdication  of  August  4th,  1789,  The 
third  is  the  method  apparently  contemplated  by  the 
building  guilds  which  are  now  in  process  of  formation 
in  Great  Britain.  The  fourth  method  of  treating  the 
capitalist  is  followed  by  the  co-operative  movement.  It 
is  also  that  proposed  by  the  committee  of  employers  and 
trade-unionists  in  the  building  industry  over  which  Mr. 
Foster  presided,  and  which  proposed  that  employers 
should  be  paid  a  fixed  salary,  and  a  fixed  rate  of  inter- 


104  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

est  on  their  capital,  but  that  all  surplus  profits  should 
be  pooled  and  administered  by  a  central  body  repre- 
senting employers  and  workers.  The  fifth  has  repeat- 
edly been  practised  by  municipalities,  and  somewhat 
less  often  by  national  governments. 

Which  of  these  alternative  methods  of  removing  in- 
dustry from  the  control  of  the  property-owner  is  adopted 
is  a  matter  of  expediency  to  be  decided  in  each  particu- 
lar case.  "  Nationalization,"  therefore,  which  is  some- 
times advanced  as  the  only  method  of  extinguishing  pro- 
prietary rights,  is  merely  one  species  of  a  considerable 
genus.  It  can  be  used,  of  course,  to  produce  the  desired 
result.  But  there  are  some  industries,  at  any  rate,  in 
which  nationalization  is  not  necessary  in  order  to  bring 
it  about,  and  since  it  is  at  best  a  cumbrous  process,  when 
other  methods  are  possible,  other  methods  should  be 
used.  Nationalization  is  a  means  to  an  end,  not  an  end 
in  itself.  Properly  conceived  its  object  is  not  to  estab- 
lish state  management  of  industry,  but  to  remove  the 
dead  hand  of  private  ownership,  when  the  private  owner 
has  ceased  to  perform  any  positive  function.  It  is  un- 
fortunate, therefore,  that  the  abolition  of  obstructive 
property  rights,  which  is  indispensable,  should  have 
been  identified  with  a  single  formula,  which  may  be 
applied  with  advantage  in  the  special  circumstances  of 
some  industries,  but  need  not  necessarily  be  applied  in 
all.  Ownership  is  not  a  right,  but  a  bundle  of  rights, 
and  it  is  possible  to  strip  them  off  piecemeal  as  well  as 
to  strike  them  off  simultaneously.  The  ownership  of 
capital  involves,  as  we  have  said,  three  main  claims;  the 
right  to  interest  as  the  price  of  capital,  the  right  to 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  105 

profits,  and  the  right  to  control,  in  virtue  of  which 
managers  and  workmen  are  the  servants  of  shareholders. 
These  rights  in  their  fullest  degree  are  not  the  invariable 
accompaniment  of  ownership,  nor  need  they  necessarily 
co-exist.  The  ingenuity  of  financiers  long  ago  devised 
methods  of  grading  stock  in  such  a  way  that  the  owner- 
ship of  some  carries  full  control,  while  that  of  others 
does  not,  that  some  bear  all  the  risk  and  are  entitled  to 
all  the  profits,  while  others  are  limited  in  respect  to  both. 
All  are  property,  but  not  all  carry  proprietary  rights 
of  the  same  degree. 

As  long  as  the  private  ownership  of  industrial  capital 
remains,  the  object  of  reformers  should  be  to  attenuate 
its  influence  by  insisting  that  it  shall  be  paid  not  more 
than  a  rate  of  interest  fixed  in  advance,  and  that  it 
should  carry  with  it  no  right  of  control.  In  such  cir- 
cumstances the  position  of  the  ordinary  shareholder 
would  approximate  to  that  of  the  owner  of  debentures; 
the  property  in  the  industry  would  be  converted  into  a 
mortgage  on  its  profits,  while  the  control  of  its  admin- 
istration and  all  profits  in  excess  of  the  minimum  would 
remain  to  be  vested  elsewhere.  So,  of  course,  would 
the  risks.  But  risks  are  of  two  kinds,  those  of  the  in- 
dividual business  and  those  of  the  industry.  The  for- 
mer are  much  heavier  than  the  latter,  for  though  a  coal 
mine  is  a  speculative  investment,  coal  mining  is  not,  and 
as  long  as  each  business  is  managed  as  a  separate  unit, 
the  payments  made  to  shareholders  must  cover  both.  If 
the  ownership  of  capital  in  each  industry  were  unified, 
which  does  not  mean  centralized,  those  risks  which  are 
incidental  to   individual  competition  would  be   elimi- 


106  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

nated,  and  the  credit  of  each  unit  would  be  that  of  the 
whole. 

Such  a  change  in  the  character  of  ownership  would 
have  three  advantages.    It  would  abolish  the  government 
of  industry  by  property.     It  would  end  the  payment  of 
profits  to  functionless  shareholders  by  turning  them  into 
creditors  paid  a  fixed  rate  of  interest.      It  would  lay 
the  only  possible  foundations  for  industrial  peace  by 
making  it  possible  to  convert  industry  into  a  profession 
carried  on  by  all  grades  of  workers  for  the  service  of 
the  public,  not  for  the  gain  of  those  who  own  capital. 
The  organization  which  it  would  produce  will  be  de- 
scribed, of  course,  as  impracticable.     It  is  interesting, 
therefore,  to  find  it  is  that  which  experience  has  led 
practical  men  to  suggest  as  a  remedy  for  the  disorders 
of  one  of  the  most  important  of  national  industries,  that 
of  building.     The  question  before  the  Committee  of  em- 
ployers and  workmen,  which  issued  last  August  a  Report 
upon  the  Building  Trade,  was  "  Scientific  Management 
and  the  Reduction  of  Costs."  ^     These  are  not  phrases 
which  suggest  an  economic  revolution;  but  it  is  some- 
thing little  short  of  a  revolution  that  the  signatories  of 
the  report  propose.     For,  as  soon  as  they  came  to  grips 
with  the  problem,  they  found  that  it  was  impossible  to 
handlo  it  effectively  without  reconstituting  the  general 
fabric  of  industrial  relationships  which  is  its  setting. 
Why  is  the  service  supplied  by  the  industry  ineffective? 
Partly  because  the  workers  do  not  give  their  full  ener- 
gies to  the   performance  of  their  part   in   production. 

•  Reprinted    in    The    Industrial    Council    for    the   Building    In- 
dustry. 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  107 

Why  do  they  not  give  their  best  energies?  Because  of 
"  the  fear  of  unemployment,  the  disinclination  of  the 
operatives  to  make  unlimited  profit  for  private  em- 
ployers, the  lack  of  interest  evinced  by  operatives  owing 
to  their  non-participation  in  control,  inefficiency  both 
managerial  and  operative."  How  are  these  psycho- 
logical obstacles  to  efficiency  to  be  counteracted?  By 
increased  supervision  and  speeding  up,  by  the  allure- 
ments of  a  premium  bonus  system,  or  the  other  devices 
by  which  men  who  are  too  ingenious  to  have  imagina- 
tion or  moral  insight  would  bully  or  cajole  poor  human 
nature  into  doing  what — if  only  the  systems  they  in- 
vent would  let  it! — it  desires  to  do,  simple  duties 
and  honest  work?  ISTot  at  all.  By  turning  the  build- 
ing of  houses  into  what  teaching  now  is,  and  Mr. 
Squeers  thought  it  could  never  be,  an  honorable  pro- 
fession. 

"  We  believe,"  they  write,  "  that  the  great  task  of 
our  Industrial  Council  is  to  develop  an  entirely  new 
system  of  industrial  control  by  the  members  of  the  in- 
dustry itself — the  actual  producers,  whether  by  hand  or 
brain,  and  to  bring  them  into  co-operation  with  the  State 
as  the  central  representative  of  the  community  whom 
they  are  organized  to  serve."  Instead  of  unlimited 
profits,  so  "  indispensable  as  an  incentive  to  efficiency," 
the  employer  is  to  be  paid  a  salary  for  his  services  as 
manager,  and  a  rate  of  interest  on  his  capital  which 
is  to  be  both  fixed  and  (unless  he  fails  to  earn  it  through 
his  own  inefficiency)  guaranteed ;  anything  in  excess  of 
it,  any  "  profits  "  in  fact,  which  in  other  industries  are 
distributed  as  dividends  to  shareholders,  he  is  to  sur- 


108  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

render  to  a  central  fund  to  be  administered  by  em- 
ployers and  workmen  for  the  benefit  of  the  industry  as 
a  whole.  Instead  of  the  financial  standing  of  each 
firm  being  treated  as  an  inscrutable  mystery  to  the 
public,  with  the  result  that  it  is  sometimes  a  mystery 
to  itself,  there  is  to  be  a  system  of  public  costing  and 
audit,  on  the  basis  of  which  the  industry  will  assume  a 
collective  liability  for  those  firms  which  are  shown  to 
he  competently  managed.  Instead  of  the  workers  being 
dismissed  in  slack  times  to  struggle  along  as  best  they 
can,  they  arc  to  be  maintained  from  a  fund  raised  by  a 
levy  on  employers  and  administered  by  the  trade  unions. 
There  is  to  be  publicity  as  to  costs  and  profits,  open 
dealing  and  honest  work  and  mutual  helpfulness,  in- 
stead of  the  competition  which  the  nineteenth  century 
regarded  as  an  efficient  substitute  for  them.  "  Capital  " 
is  not  to  *'  employ  labor."  Labor,  which  includes  mana- 
gerial labor,  is  to  employ  capital ;  and  to  employ  it  at 
the  cheapest  rate  at  which,  in  the  circumstances  of  the 
trade,  it  can  be  got.  If  it  employs  it  so  successfully 
that  there  is  a  surplus  when  it  has  been  fairly  paid  for 
its  own  services,  then  that  surplus  is  not  to  be  divided 
among  shareholders,  for,  when  they  have  been  paid 
interest,  they  have  been  paid  their  due;  it  is  to  be  used 
to  equip  the  industry  to  provide  still  more  effective 
service  in  the  future. 

So  here  we  have  the  majority  of  a  body  of  practical 
men,  who  care  nothing  for  socialist  theories,  proposing 
to  establish  "  organized  Public  Service  in  the  Building 
Industry,"  recommending,  in  short,  that  their  industry 
shall  be  turned  into  a  profession.     And  they  do  it,  it 


INDUSTKY  AS  A  PROFESSION  109 

will  be  observed,  by  just  that  functional  organization, 
just  that  conversion  of  full  proprietary  rights  into  r 
mortgage  secured  (as  far  as  efficient  firms  are  con 
cemed)  on  the  industry  as  a  whole,  just  that  trans- 
ference of  the  control  of  production  from  the  owner  of 
capital  to  those  whose  business  is  production,  which  we 
saw  is  necessary  if  industry  is  to  be  organized  for  the 
performance  of  service,  not  for  the  pecuniary  advan- 
tage of  those  who  hold  proprietary  rights.  Their 
Report  is  of  the  first  importance  as  offering  a  policy 
for  attenuating  private  property  in  capital  in  the  im- 
portant group  of  industries  in  which  private  owner- 
ship, in  one  form  or  another,  is  likely  for  some 
considerable  time  to  continue,  and  a  valuable  serv- 
ice would  be  rendered  by  any  one  who  would  work 
out  in  detail  the  application  of  its  principle  to  other 
trades. 

'Not,  of  course,  that  this  is  the  only  way,  or  in  highly 
capitalized  industries  the  most  feasible  way,  in  which 
the  change  can  be  brought  about.  Had  the  movement 
against  the  control  of  production  by  property  taken 
place  before  the  rise  of  limited  companies,  in  which 
ownership  is  separated  from  management,  the  transition 
to  the  organization  of  industry  as  a  profession  might 
also  have  taken  place,  as  the  employers  and  workmen 
in  the  building  trade  propose  that  it  should,  by  limit- 
ing the  rights  of  private  ownership  without  abolishing 
it.  But  that  is  not  what  has  actually  happened,  and 
therefore  the  proposals  of  the  building  trade  are  not  of 
universal  application.  It  is  possible  to  retain  private 
ownership  in  building  and  in  industries  lik«  building, 


110  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

while  changing  its  character,  precisely  because  in  build- 
ing the  employer  is  normally  not  merely  an  owner,  but 
something  else  as  well.  He  is  a  manager;  that  is,  he  is 
a  workman.  And  because  he  is  a  workman,  whose  in- 
terests, and  still  more  whose  professional  spirit  as  a 
workman  may  often  outweigh  his  interests  and  merely 
financial  spirit  as  an  owner,  he  can  form  part  of  the 
productive  organization  of  the  industry,  after  his  rights 
as  an  owner  have  been  trimmed  and  limited. 

But  that  dual  position  is  abnormal,  and  in  the  highly 
organized  industries  is  becoming  more  abnormal  every 
year.  In  coal,  in  cotton,  in  ship-building,  in  many 
branches  of  engineering  the  owner  of  capital  is  not,  as 
he  is  in  building,  an  organizer  or  manager.  His  con- 
nection with  the  industry  and  interest  in  it  is  purely 
financial.  He  is  an  owner  and  nothing  more.  And  be- 
cause his  interest  is  merely  financial,  so  that  his  con- 
cern is  dividends  and  production  only  as  a  means  to 
dividends,  he  cannot  be  worked  into  an  organization  of 
industry  which  vests  administration  in  a  body  re])re- 
senting  all  grades  of  producers,  or  producers  and  con- 
sumers together,  for  he  has  no  purpose  in  common  with 
them ;  so  that  while  joint  councils  between  workers  and 
managers  may  succeed,  joint  councils  between  workers 
and  owners  or  agents  of  owners,  like  most  of  the  so- 
called  Whitley  Councils,  will  not,  because  the  necessity 
for  the  mere  owner  is  itself  one  of  the  points  in  dispute. 
The  master  builder,  who  owns  the  capital  used,  can  be 
included,  not  qua  capitalist,  but  qua  builder,  if  he  sur- 
renders some  of  the  rights  of  ownership,  as  the  Build- 
ing Industry  Committee  proposed  that  he  should.     But 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  111 

if  the  shareholder  in  a  colliery  or  a  shipyard  abdicates 
the  control  and  unlimited  profits  to  which,  qua  capi- 
talist, he  is  at  present  entitled,  he  abdicates  everything 
that  makes  him  what  he  is,  and  has  no  other  standing 
in  the  industry.  He  cannot  share,  like  the  master 
builder,  in  its  management,  because  he  has  no  qualifi- 
cations which  would  enable  him  to  do  so.  His  object 
is  profit;  and  if  industry  is  to  become,  as  employers 
and  workers  in  the  building  trade  propose,  an  "  organ- 
ized public  service,"  then  its  subordination  to  the  share- 
holder whose  object  is  profit,  is,  as  they  clearly  see, 
precisely  what  must  be  eliminated.  The  master  builders 
propose  to  give  it  up.  They  can  do  so  because  they  have 
their  place  in  the  industry  in  virtue  of  their  function 
as  workmen.  But  if  the  shareholder  gave  it  up,  he 
would  have  no  place  at  all. 

Hence  in  coal  mining,  where  ownership  and  manage- 
ment are  sharply  separated,  the  ovsmers  will  not  admit 
the  bare  possibility  of  any  system  in  which  the  control 
of  the  administration  of  the  mines  is  shared  between 
the  management  and  the  miners.  "  I  am  authorized  to 
state  on  behalf  of  the  Mining  Association,"  Lord  Gain- 
ford,  the  chief  witness  on  behalf  of  the  mine-owners, 
informed  the  Coal  Commission,  "  that  if  the  owners  are 
not  to  be  left  complete  executive  control  they  will  de- 
cline to  accept  the  responsibility  for  carrying  on  the 
industry."  ^  So  the  mine-owners  blow  away  in  a  sen- 
tence the  whole  body  of  plausible  make-believe  which 
rests  on  the  idea  that,  while  private  ownership  remains 

'  Coal  Industry  Commission,  Minutes  of  Evidence,  Vol.  I,  l> 
2506. 


112  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

unaltered,  industrial  harmony  can  be  produced  by  the 
magic  formula  of  joint  control.  And  they  are  right. 
The  representatives  of  workmen  and  shareholders,  in 
mining  and  in  other  industries,  can  meet  and  negotiate 
and  discuss.  But  joint  administration  of  the  share- 
holders' property  by  a  body  representing  shareholders 
and  workmen  is  impossible,  because  there  is  no  purpose 
in  common  between  them.  For  the  only  purpose  which 
could  unite  all  persons  engaged  in  industry,  and  over- 
rule their  particular  and  divergent  interests,  is  the 
provision  of  service.  And  the  object  of  shareholders, 
the  whole  significance  and  metier  of  industry  to  them, 
is  not  the  provision  of  service  but  the  provision  of 
dividends. 

In  industries  where  management  is  divorced  from 
ownership,  as  in  most  of  the  highly  organized  trades  it 
is  to-day,  there  is  no  obvious  halfway  house,  therefore, 
between  the  retention  of  the  present  system  and  the  com- 
plete extrusion  of  the  capitalist  from  the  control  of  pro- 
duction. The  change  in  the  character  of  ownership, 
which  is  necessary  in  order  that  coal  or  textiles  and 
ship-building  may  be  organized  as  professions  for  the 
ser\'ice  of  the  public,  cannot  easily  spring  from  within. 
The  stroke  needed  to  liberate  them  from  the  control  of 
the  property-owner  must  come  from  without.  In  theory 
it  might  be  struck  by  action  on  the  part  of  organized 
workers,  who  would  abolish  residuary  profits  and  the 
right  of  control  by  the  mere  procedure  of  refusing  to 
work  as  long  as  they  were  maintained,  on  the  historical 
analogy  offered  by  peasants  who  have  destroyed  preda- 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  113 

tory  property  in  the  past  by  declining  to  pay  its  dues 
and  admit  its  government,  in  which  case  Parliament 
would  intervene  only  to  register  the  community's  assent 
to  the  fait  accompli.  In  practice,  however,  the  condi- 
tions of  modern  industry  being  what  they  are,  that 
course,  apart  from  its  other  disadvantages,  is  so  un- 
likely to  be  attempted,  or,  if  attempted,  to  succeed,  that 
it  can  be  neglected.  The  alternative  to  it  is  that  the 
change  in  the  character  of  property  should  be  affected 
by  legislation  in  virtue  of  which  the  rights  of  ownership 
in  an  industry  are  bought  out  simultaneously. 

In  either  case,  though  the  procedure  is  different,  the 
result  of  the  change,  once  it  ic  accomplished,  is  the 
same.  Private  property  in  capital,  in  the  sense  of 
the  right  to  profits  and  control,  is  abolished.  What 
femains  of  it  is,  at  most,  a  mortgage  in  favor  of  the 
previous  proprietors,  a  dead  leaf  which  is  preserved, 
though  the  sap  of  industry  no  longer  feeds  it,  as  long 
as  it  is  not  thought  worth  while  to  strike  it  off.  And 
since  the  capital  needed  to  maintain  and  equip  a  modern 
industry  could  not  be  provided  by  any  one  group  of 
workers,  even  were  it  desirable  on  other  grounds  that 
they  should  step  completely  into  the  position  of  the  pres- 
ent owners,  the  complex  of  rights  which  constitutes 
ownership  remains  to  be  shared  between  them  and  what- 
ever organ  may  act  on  behalf  of  the  general  community. 
The  former,  for  example,  may  be  the  heir  of  the  present 
owners  as  far  as  the  control  of  the  routine  and  adminis- 
tration of  industry  is  concerned:  the  latter  may  suc- 
ceed to  their  right  to  dispose  of  residuary  profits.  The 
elements  composing  property,  have,  in  fact,  to  be  dis- 


114  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

entangled:  and  the  fact  that  to-day,  under  the  common 
name  of  ownership,  several  diflferent  powers  are  vested 
in  identical  hands,  must  not  be  allowed  to  obscure  the 
probability  that,  once  private  property  in  capital  has 
been  abolished,  it  may  be  expedient  to  re-allocate  those 
powers  in  detail  as  well  as  to  transfer  them  en  hloc. 
[  The  essence  of  a  profession  is,  as  we  have  suggested, 
that  its  members  organize  themselves  for  the  perform- 
ance of  function.    It  is  essential  therefore,  if  industry  is 
to  be  professionalized,  that  the  abolition  of  functionless 
property  should  not  be  interpreted  to  imply  a  continu- 
ance under  public  ownership  of  the  absence  of  respon- 
sibility on  the  part  of  the  personnel  of  industry,  which 
is    the    normal    accompaniment    of    private    ownership 
working  through  the  wage-system.     It  is  the  more  im- 
portant to  emphasize  that  point,  because  such  an  impli- 
cation has  sometimes  been  conveyed  in  the  past  by  some 
of  those  who  have  presented  the  case  for  some  such 
change  in  the  character  of  ownership  as  has  been  urged 
above.     The  name  consecrated  by  custom  to  the  trans- 
formation of  property  by  public  and  external  action  is 
nationalization.     But  nationalization  is  a  word  which 
is   neither  very   felicitous   nor    free   from    ambiguity. 
Properly  used,  it  means  merely  ownership  by  a  body 
representing  the  nation.     But  it  has  come  in  practice 
to  1m'  used  as  equivalent  to  a  particular  method  of  ad- 
ministration,   under    which    officials   employed    by    the 
State  step  into  the  position  of  the  present  directors  of 
industry,  and  exercise  all  the  power  which  they  exer- 
cised.     So   those   who   desire    to    maintain    the   system 
under  which  industry  is  earried  on,  not  as  a  profession 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  115 

serving  the  public,  but  for  the  advantage  of  share- 
holders, attack  nationalization  on  the  ground  that  state 
management  is  necessarily  inefficient,  and  tremble  with 
apprehension  whenever  they  post  a  letter  in  a  letter-box; 
and  those  who  desire  to  change  it  reply  that  state  serv- 
ices are  efficient  and  praise  God  whenever  they  use  a 
telephone;  as  though  either  private  or  public  adminis- 
tration had  certain  peculiar  and  unalterable  character- 
istics, instead  of  depending  for  its  quality,  like  an  army 
or  railway  company  or  school,  and  all  other  undertak- 
ings, public  and  private  alike,  not  on  whether  those 
who  conduct  it  are  private  officials  or  state  officials,  but 
on  whether  they  are  properly  trained  for  their  work 
and  can  command  the  good  will  and  confidence  of  their 
subordinates. 

The  arguments  on  both  sides  are  ingenious,  but  in 
reality  nearly  all  of  them  are  beside  the  point.  The 
merits  of  nationalization  do  not  stand  or  fall  with  the 
efficiency  or  inefficiency  of  existing  state  departments 
as  administrators  of  industry.  For  nationalization, 
which  means  public  ownership,  is  compatible  with  sev- 
eral different  types  of  management.  The  constitution 
of  the  industry  may  be  "  unitary,"  as  is  (for  example) 
that  of  the  post-office.  Or  it  may  be  "  federal,"  as  was 
that  designed  by  Mr.  Justice  Sankey  for  the  Coal  In-- 
dustry.  Administration  may  be  centralized  or  decen- 
tralized. The  authorities  to  whom  it  is  intrusted  may 
be  composed  of  representatives  of  the  consumers,  or  of 
representatives  of  professional  associations,  or  of  state 
officials,  or  of  all  three  in  several  different  proportions. 
Executive  work  may  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  civil 


116  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

servants,  trained,  recruited  and  prcnioted  as  in  the 
existino;  state  departments,  or  a  new  service  may  be 
created  with  a  procedure  and  standards  of  its  own.  It 
may  be  subject  to  Treasury  control,  or  it  may  be  finan- 
cially autonomous.  The  problem  is,  in  fact,  of  a 
familiar,  though  difficult,  order.  It  is  one  of  constitu- 
tion-making. 

It  is  commonly  assumed  by  controversialists  that  the 
organization  and  management  of  a  nationalized  in- 
dustry must,  for  some  undefined  reason,  be  similar  to 
that  of  the  post-office.  One  might  as  reasonably  suggest 
that  the  pattern  exemplar  of  private  enterprise  must 
be  the  Steel  Corporation  or  the  Imperial  Tobacco  Com- 
pany. The  administrative  systems  obtaining  in  a  so- 
ciety which  has  nationalized  its  foundation  industries 
will,  in  fact,  be  as  various  as  in  one  that  resigns  them 
to  private  ownership;  and  to  discuss  their  relative  ad- 
vantages without  defining  what  })articular  type  of  each 
is  the  subject  of  reference  is  to-day  as  unhelpful  as  to 
approach  a  modern  political  problem  in  terms  of  the 
Aristotelian  classification  of  constitutions.  The  highly 
abstract  dialectics  as  to  *'  enterprise,"  "  initiative," 
"  bureaucracy,"  "  re<l  tape,"  ''  democratic  control," 
"  state  management,"  which  fill  the  press  of  countries 
occupied  with  industrial  ])robk'nis,  really  belong  to  the 
dark  ages  of  economic  thought.  The  first  task  of  the 
student,  whatever  his  personal  conclusions,  is,  it  may  be 
suggested,  to  contribute  what  he  can  to  the  restoration 
of  sanity  by  insisting  that  instead  of  the  argument  being 
conducted  with  the  counters  of  a  highly  inflated  and 
rapidly  depreciating  verbal  currency,  the  exact  situation. 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  117 

in  so  far  as  is  possible,  shall  be  stated  as  it  is;  uncer- 
tainties (of  which  there  are  many)  shall  be  treated  as 
uncertain,  and  the  precise  meaning  of  alternative  pro- 
posals shall  be  strictly  defined.  Not  the  least  of  the 
merits  of  Mr.  Justice  Sankey's  report  was  that,  by  stat- 
ing in  great  detail  the  type  of  organization  which  he 
recommended  for  the  Coal  Industry,  he  imparted  a  new 
precision  and  reality  into  the  whole  discussion.  Whether 
his  conclusions  are  accepted  or  not,  it  is  from  the  basis 
of  clearly  defined  proposals  such  as  his  that  the  future 
discussion  of  these  problems  must  proceed.  It  may  not 
find  a  solution.  It  will  at  least  do  something  to  create 
the  temper  in  which  alone  a  reasonable  solution  can  be 
sought. 

Nationalization,  then,  is  not  an  end,  but  a  means  to 
an  end,  and  when  the  question  of  ownership  has  been 
settled  the  question  of  administration  remains  for  solu- 
tion. As  a  means  it  is  likely  to  be  indispensable  in  those 
industries  in  which  the  rights  of  private  proprietors 
cannot  easily  be  modified  without  the  action  of  the 
State,  just  as  the  purchase  of  land  by  county  councils 
is  a  necessary  step  to  the  establishment  of  small  holders, 
when  landowners  will  not  voluntarily  part  with  their 
property  for  the  purpose.  But  the  object  in  purchasing 
land  is  to  establish  small  holders,  not  to  set  up  farms 
administered  by  state  officials ;  and  the  object  of  na- 
tionalizing mining  or  railways  or  the  manufacture  of 
steel  should  not  be  to  establish  any  particular  form  of 
state  management,  but  to  release  those  who  do  construc- 
tive work  from  the  control  of  those  whose  sole  interest 
is  pecuniary  gain,  in  order  that  they  may  be  free  to 


118  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

apply  their  energies  to  the  true  purpose  of  industry, 
which  is  the  provision  of  service,  not  the  provision  of 
dividends.  When  the  transference  of  property  tas 
taken  place,  it  will  probably  be  found  that  the  neces- 
sary provision  for  the  government  of  industry  will  in- 
volve not  merely  the  freedom  of  the  producers  to  pro- 
duce, but  the  creation  of  machinery  through  which  the 
consumer,  for  whom  he  produces,  can  express  his  wishes 
and  criticize  the  way  in  which  they  are  met,  as  at  pres- 
ent he  normally  cannot.  But  that  is  the  second  stage 
in  the  process  of  reorganizing  industry  for  the  per- 
formance of  function,  not  the  first.  The  first  is  to  free 
it  from  subordination  to  the  pecuniary  interests  of  the 
owner  of  property,  because  they  are  the  magnetic  pole 
■which  sets  all  the  compasses  wrong,  and  which  causes 
industry,  however  swiftly  it  may  progress,  to  progress 
in  the  wrong  direction. 

Nor  does  this  change  in  the  character  of  property 
involve  a  breach  with  the  existing  order  so  sharp  as  to 
be  impracticable.  The  j)hra?eology  of  political  contro- 
versy continues  to  reproduce  the  conventional  antith- 
eses of  the  early  nineteenth  century;  "private  enter- 
prise "  and  "  public  ownership "  are  still  contrasted 
with  each  other  as  light  with  darkness  or  darkness  with 
light.  But,  in  reality,  behind  the  formal  shell  of  the 
traditional  legal  system  the  elements  of  a  new  body  of 
relationship  have  already  been  prepared,  and  find  piece- 
meal application  through  policies  devised,  not  by 
socialists,  but  by  men  who  repeat  the  formula}  of  in- 
dividualism, at  the  very  moment  when  they  are  under- 
mining it.     The  Esch-Cummins  Act   in   America,  the 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  PROFESSION  119 

Act  establishing  a  Ministry  of  Transport  in  England, 
Sir  Arthur  Duckham's  scheme  for  the  organization  of 
the  coal  mines,  the  proposals  with  regard  to  the  coal  in- 
dustry of  the  British  Government  itself,  appear  to  have 
the  common  characteristic  of  retaining  private  owner- 
ship in  name,  while  attenuating  it  in  fact,  by  placing 
its  operators  under  the  supervision,  accompanied  some- 
times by  a  financial  guarantee,  of  a  public  authority. 
Schemes  of  this  general  character  appear,  indeed,  to  be 
the  first  instinctive  reaction  produced  by  the  discovery 
that  private  enterprise  is  no  longer  functioning  effec- 
tively ;  it  is  probable  that  they  possess  certain  merits  of 
a  technical  order  analogous  to  those  associated  with  the 
amalgamation  of  competing  firms  into  a  single  combina- 
tion. It  is  questionable,  however,  whether  the  com- 
promise which  they  represent  is  permanently  tenable. 
What,  after  all,  it  may  be  asked,  are  the  advantages  of 
private  ownership  when  it  has  been  pared  down  to  the 
point  which  policies  of  this  order  propose?  May  not 
the  "  owner  "  whose  rights  they  are  designed  to  protect 
not  unreasonably  reply  to  their  authors,  "  Thank  you 
for  nothing"?  Individual  enterprise  has  its  merits: 
so  also,  perhaps,  has  public  ownership.  But,  by  the  time 
these  schemes  have  done  with  it,  not  much  remains  of 
"  the  simple  and  obvious  system  of  natural  liberty," 
while  their  inventors  are  precluded  from  appealing  to 
the  motives  which  are  emphasized  by  advocates  of  na- 
tionalization. It  is  one  thing  to  be  an  entrepreneur 
with  a  world  of  adventure  and  unlimited  profits — if 
they  can  be  achieved — before  one.  It  is  quite  another 
to  be  a  director  of  a  railway  company  or  coal  corpora- 


120  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

tion  with  a  minimum  rate  of  profit  guaranteed  by  the 
State,  and  a  maximum  rate  of  profit  which  cannot  be 
exceeded.  Hybrids  are  apt  to  be  sterile.  It  may  be 
questioned  whether,  in  drawing  the  teeth  of  private 
capitalism,  this  type  of  compromise  does  not  draw  out 
most  of  its  virtues  as  well. 

So,  when  a  certain  stage  of  economic  development 
has  been  reached,  private  ownership,  b}'  the  admission 
of  its  defenders,  can  no  longer  be  tolerated  in  the  only 
form  in  which  it  is  free  to  display  the  characteristic, 
and  quite  genuine,  advantages  for  the  sake  of  which  it 
used  to  be  defended.  And,  as  step  by  step  it  is  whittled 
down  by  tacit  concessions  to  the  practical  necessity  of 
protecting  the  consumer,  or  eliminating  waste,  or  meet- 
ing the  claims  of  the  workers,  public  ownership  becomes, 
not  only  on  social  grounds,  but  for  reasons  of  economic 
efficiency,  the  alternative  to  a  ty])e  of  private  ownership 
which  appears  to  carry  with  it  few  rights  of  ownership 
and  to  be  singularly  devoid  of  privacy.  Inevitably  and 
unfortunately  the  change  must  be  gradual.  But  it 
should  be  continuous.  When,  as  in  the  last  few  years, 
the  State  has  acquired  the  ownership  of  great  masses 
of  industrial  capital,  it  should  retain  it,  instead  of  sur- 
rendering it  to  private  capitalists,  who  protest  at  once 
that  it  will  be  managed  so  inefficiently  that  it  will  not 
pay  and  managed  so  efficiently  that  it  will  undersell 
them.  When  estates  are  being  broken  up  and  sold,  as 
they  are  at  present,  public  bodies  should  enter  the 
market  and  acquire  them.  Most  important  of  all,  the 
ridiculous  barrier,  inherited  from  an  age  in  which 
niuniripal  corporations  were  corrupt  oligarchies,  which 


INDUSTRY  AS  A  TROFESSION  121 

at  present  prevents  England's  Local  Authorities  from 
acquiring  property  in  land  and  industrial  capital,  ex- 
cept for  purposes  specified  by  Act  of  Parliament,  should 
be  abolished,  and  they  should  be  free  to  undertake  such 
services  as  the  citizens  may  desire.  The  objection  to 
public  ownership,  in  so  far  as  it  is  intelligent,  is  in 
reality  largely  an  objection  to  over-centralization.  But 
the  remedy  for  over-centralization,  is  not  the  mainte- 
nance of  functionless  property  in  private  hands,  but  the 
decentralized  ownership  of  public  property,  and  when 
Birmingham  and  Manchester  and  Leeds  are  the  little 
republics  which  they  should  be,  there  is  no  reason  to 
anticipate  that  they  will  tremble  at  a  whisper  from 
Whitehall. 

These  things  should  be  done  steadily  and  contin- 
uously quite  apart  from  the  special  cases  like  that  of  the 
mines  and  railways,  where  the  private  ownership  of 
capital  is  stated  by  the  experts  to  have  been  responsible 
for  intolerable  waste,  or  the  manufacture  of  ornaments 
and  alcoholic  liquor,  which  are  politically  and  socially 
too  dangerous  to  be  left  in  private  hands.  They  should 
be  done  not  in  order  to  establish  a  single  form  of  bureau- 
cratic management,  but  in  order  to  release  the  industry 
from  the  domination  of  proprietary  interests,  which, 
whatever  the  form  of  management,  are  not  merely 
troublesome  in  detail  but  vicious  in  principle,  because 
they  divert  it  from  the  performance  of  function  to  the 
acquisition  of  gain.  If  at  the  same  time  private  owner- 
ship is  shaken,  as  recently  it  has  been,  by  action  on  the 
part  of  particular  groups  of  workers,  so  much  the 
better.     There  are  more  ways  of  killing  a  cat  than 


122  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

drowninf^  it  in  croam,  and  it  is  all  the  more  likely  to 
choose  the  cream  if  they  are  explained  to  it.  But  the 
two  methods  are  complementary,  not  alternative,  and 
the  attempt  to  found  rival  schools  on  an  imaginary  in- 
coni]iatibility  between  them  is  a  bad  case  of  the  odium 
sociologicum  which  afflicts  reformers. 


VIII 

THE  '^VICIOUS  CIKCLE" 

What  form  of  management  should  replace  the  admin- 
istration of  industry  by  the  agents  of  shareholders? 
What  is  most  likely  to  hold  it  to  its  main  purpose,  and 
to  be  least  at  the  mercy  of  predatory  interests  and  f  unc- 
tionless  supernumeraries,  and  of  the  alternations  of 
sullen  dissatisfaction  and  spasmodic  revolt  which  at 
present  distract  it?  Whatever  the  system  upon  which 
industry  is  administered,  one  thing  is  certain.  Its  eco- 
nomic processes  and  results  must  be  public,  because  only 
if  they  are  public  can  it  be  known  whether  the  service 
of  industry  is  vigilant,  effective  and  honorable,  whether 
its  purpose  is  being  realized  and  its  function  carried 
out.  The  defense  of  secrecy  in  business  resembles  the 
defense  of  adulteration  on  the  ground  that  it  is  a  legit- 
imate weapon  of  competition;  indeed  it  has  even  less 
justification  than  that  famous  doctrine,  for  the  condition 
of  effective  competition  is  publicity,  and  one  motive  for 
secrecy  is  to  prevent  it. 

Those  who  conduct  industry  at  the  present  time  and 
who  are  most  emphatic  that,  as  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
said  of  the  unreformed  House  of  Commons,  they  "  have 
never  read  or  heard  of  any  measure  up  to  the  present 
moment  which  can  in  any  degree  satisfy  the  mind  "  that 
the  method  of  conducting  it  can  in  any  way  be  im- 
proved, are  also  those  apparently  who,  with  some  honor- 

123 


124  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

able  exceptions,  are  most  reluctant  that  the  full  facts 
about  it  should  be  known.  And  it  is  crucial  that  they 
should  be  known.  It  is  crucial  not  only  because,  in  the 
present  ignorance  of  the  real  economic  situation,  all 
industrial  disagreements  tend  inevitably  to  be  battles  in 
the  dark,  in  which  ''  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night," 
but  because,  unless  there  is  complete  publicity  as  to 
profits  and  costs,  it  is  impossible  to  form  any  judgment 
either  of  the  reasonableness  of  the  prices  which  are 
charged  or  of  the  claims  to  remuneration  of  the  different 
parties  engaged  in  production.  For  balance  sheets,  with 
their  opportunities  for  concealing  profits,  give  no  clear 
light  upon  the  first,  and  no  light  at  all  upon  the  second. 
And  so,  when  the  facts  come  out,  the  public  is  aghast 
at  revelations  which  show  that  industry  is  conducted 
with  bewildering  financial  extravagance.  If  the  full 
facts  had  been  published,  as  they  should  have  been, 
quarter  by  quarter,  these  revelations  would  probably 
not  have  been  made  at  all,  because  publicity  itself  would 
have  been  an  antiseptic  and  there  would  have  been  noth- 
ing sensational  to  reveal. 

The  events  of  the  last  few  years  are  a  lesson  which 
should  need  no  repetition.  The  Government,  surprised 
at  the  price  charged  for  making  shells  at  a  time  when 
its  soldiers  were  ordered  by  Headquarters  not  to  fire 
more  than  a  few  rounds  per  day,  whatever  the  need  for 
retaliation,  because  there  were  not  more  than  a  few  to 
fire,  establishes  a  costing  department  to  analyze  the 
estimates  submitted  by  manufacturers  and  to  compare 
them,  item  by  item,  with  the  costs  in  its  own  factories. 
It  finds  that,  throuiih  the  mere  pooling  of  knowledge. 


THE  "  VICIOUS  CIRCLE  "  125 

"  some  of  the  reductions  made  in  the  price  of  shells  and 
similar  munitions,"  as  the  Chartered  Accountant  em- 
ployed by  the  Department  tells  us,  '^  have  been  as  high 
as  50%  of  the  original  price."  The  household  con- 
sumer grumbles  at  the  price  of  coal.  For  once  in  a 
way,  amid  a  storm  of  indignation  from  influential  per- 
sons engaged  in  the  industry,  the  facts  are  published. 
And  what  do  they  show?  That,  after  2/6  has  been 
added  to  the  already  high  price  of  coal  because  the 
poorer  mines  are  alleged  not  to  be  paying  their  way, 
21%  of  the  output  examined  by  the  Commission  was 
produced  at  a  profit  of  1/-  to  3/-  per  ton,  32%  at  a  profit 
of  3/-  to  5/-,  13%  at  a  profit  of  5/-  to  7/-,  and  14% 
at  a  profit  of  7/-  per  ton  and  over,  while  the  profits  of 
distributors  in  London  alone  amount  in  the  aggregate 
to  over  $3,200,000,  and  the  co-operative  movement, 
which  aims  not  at  profit,  but  at  service,  distributes 
household  coal  at  a  cost  of  from  2/-  to  4/-  less  per  ton 
than  is  charged  by  the  coal  trade !  ^ 

"  But  these  are  exceptions."  They  may  be.  It  is 
possible  that  in  the  industries,  in  which,  as  the  recent 
Committee  on  Trusts  has  told  us,  "  powerful  Combina- 
tions or  Consolidations  of  one  kind  or  another  are  in  a 
position  effectively  to  control  output  and  prices,"  not 
only  costs  are  cut  to  the  bare  minimum  but  profits  are 
inconsiderable.  But  then  why  insist  on  this  humiliating 
tradition  of  secrecy  with  regard  to  them,  when  every  one 
who  uses  their  products,  and  every  one  who  renders  hon- 
est service  to  production,  stands  to  gain  by  publicity? 
If  industry  is  to  become  a  profession,  whatever  its  man- 

*  Coal  Industry  Commission,  Minutes  of  Evidence,  pp.  9261-9. 


126  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

agement,  the  first  of  its  professional  rules  should  be,  as 
Sir  John  Mann  told  the  Coal  Commission,  that  "  all 
cards  should  be  placed  on  the  table."  If  it  were  the 
duty  of  a  Public  Department  to  publish  quarterly  exact 
returns  as  to  costs  of  production  and  profits  in  all  the 
firms  throughout  an  industry,  the  gain  in  mere  produc- 
tive efficiency,  which  should  appeal  to  our  enthusiasts 
for  output,  would  be  considerable;  for  the  organization 
whose  costs  were  least  would  become  the  standard  with 
which  all  other  types  of  organization  would  be  com- 
pared. The  gain  in  morale,  which  is  also,  absurd 
though  it  may  seem,  a  condition  of  efficiency,  would  be 
incalculable.  For  industry  would  be  conducted  in  the 
light  of  day.  Its  costs,  necessary  or  unnecessary,  the 
distribution  of  the  return  to  it,  reasonable  or  capricious, 
would  be  a  matter  of  common  knowledge.  It  would  be 
held  to  its  purpose  by  the  mere  impossibility  of  per- 
suading those  wlio  make  its  products  or  those  who  con- 
sume them  to  acquiesce,  as  they  acquiesce  now,  in  ex- 
penditure which  is  meaningless  because  it  has  contrib- 
uted nothing  to  the  service  which  the  industry  exists 
to  perfonn. 

The  organization  of  industry  as  a  profession  does  not 
involve  only  the  abolition  of  functionless  property,  and 
the  maintenance  of  publicity  as  the  indispensable  con- 
dition of  a  standard  of  professional  honor.  It  implies 
also  that  those  who  perform  its  work  should  undertake 
that  its  work  is  performed  effectively.  It  means  that 
they  should  not  merely  be  held  to  the  service  of  the 
public  by  fear  of  personal  inconvenience  or  penalties, 
but  that  they  should  treat  the  discharge  of  professional 


THE  "  VICIOUS  CIRCLE  "  127 

responsibilities  as  an  obligation  attaching  not  only  to  a 
small  elite  of  intellectuals,  managers  or  "  bosses,"  who 
perform  the  technical  work  of  ''  business  management," 
but  as  implied  by  the  mere  entry  into  the  industry  and 
as  resting  on  the  corporate  consent  and  initiative  of  the 
rank  and  file  of  workers.  It  is  precisely,  indeed,  in  the 
degree  to  which  that  obligation  is  interpreted  as  attach- 
ing to  all  workers,  and  not  merely  to  a  select  class,  that 
the  difference  between  the  existing  industrial  order, 
collectivism  and  the  organization  of  industry  as  a  pro- 
fession resides.  The  first  involves  the  utilization  of 
human  beings  for  the  purpose  of  private  gain;  the 
second  their  utilization  for  the  purpose  of  public 
service;  the  third  the  association  in  the  service  of  the 
public  of  their  professional  pride,  solidarity  and  organi- 
zation. 

The  difference  in  administrative  machinery  between 
the  second  and  third  might  not  be  considerable.  Both 
involve  the  drastic  limitation  or  transference  to  the 
public  of  the  proprietary  rights  of  the  existing  owners 
of  industrial  capital.  Both  would  necessitate  machinery 
for  bringing  the  opinion  of  the  consumers  to  bear  upon 
the  service  supplied  them  by  the  industry.  The  differ- 
ence consists  in  the  manner  in  which  the  obligations  of 
the  producer  to  the  public  are  conceived.  He  may  either 
be  the  executant  of  orders  transmitted  to  him  by  its 
agents;  or  he  may,  through  his  organization,  himself 
take  a  positive  part  in  determining  what  those  orders 
should  be.  In  the  former  case  he  is  responsible  for  his 
own  work,  but  not  for  anything  else.  If  he  hews  his 
stint  of  coal,  it  is  no  business  of  his  whether  the  pit  is  a 


128  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

failure;  if  he  puts  in  the  normal  number  of  rivets,  he 
disclaims  all  further  interest  in  the  price  or  the  sea- 
worthiness of  the  ship.  In  the  latter  his  function  em- 
braces something  more  than  the  performance  of  the 
specialized  piece  of  work  allotted  to  him.  It  includes 
also  a  responsibility  for  the  success  of  the  undertaking 
as  a  whole.  And  since  responsibility  is  impossible  with- 
out power,  his  position  would  involve  at  least  so  much 
power  as  is  needed  to  secure  that  he  can  affect  in  prac- 
tice the  conduct  of  the  industry.  It  is  this  collective  lia- 
bility for  the  maintenance  of  a  certain  quality  of  serv- 
ice which  is,  indeed,  the  distinguishing  feature  of  a 
profession.  It  is  compatible  with  several  different  kinds 
of  government,  or  indeed,  when  the  unit  of  production  is 
not  a  group,  but  an  individual,  with  hardly  any  govern- 
ment at  all.  What  it  does  involve  is  that  the  individual, 
merely  by  entering  the  profession  should  have  com- 
mitted himself  to  certain  obligations  in  respect  of  its 
conduct,  and  that  the  professional  organization,  what- 
ever it  may  be,  should  have  sufficient  power  to  enable  it 
to  maintain  them. 

The  demand  for  the  participation  of  the  workers  in 
the  control  of  industry  is  usually  advanced  in  the  name 
of  the  producer,  as  a  plea  for  economic  freedom  or  in- 
dustrial democracy.  "  Political  freedom,"  writes  the 
Final  Report  of  the  United  States  Commission  of  In- 
dustrial Relations,  which  was  presented  in  1916,  *'  can 
exist  only  where  there  is  industrial  freedom.  .  .  . 
There  are  now  within  the  body  of  our  Republic  indus- 
trial communities  which  are  virtually  Principalities, 
oppressive  to  those  dependent  U{)on  them  for  a  livelihood 


THE  "VICIOUS  CIRCLE"  129 

and  a  dreadful  menace  to  the  peace  and  welfare  of  the 
nation."  The  vanity  of  Englishmen  may  soften  the 
shadows  and  heighten  the  lights.  But  the  concentration 
of  authority  is  too  deeply  rooted  in  the  very  essence  of 
Capitalism  for  differences  in  the  degree  of  the  arbitrari- 
ness with  which  it  is  exercised  to  be  other  than  trivial. 
The  control  of  a  large  works  does,  in  fact,  confer  a  kind 
of  private  jurisdiction  in  matters  concerning  the  life 
and  livelihood  of  the  workers,  which,  as  the  United 
States'  Commission  suggests,  may  properly  be  described 
as  "  industrial  feudalism."  It  is  not  easy  to  understand 
how  the  traditional  liberties  of  Englishmen  are  com- 
patible with  an  organization  of  industry  which,  except 
in  so  far  as  it  has  been  qualified  by  law  or  trade  union- 
ism, permits  populations  almost  as  large  as  those  of 
some  famous  cities  of  the  past  to  be  controlled  in  their 
rising  up  and  lying  down,  in  their  work,  economic  op- 
portunities, and  social  life  by  the  decisions  of  a  Com- 
mittee of  half-a-dozen  Directors. 

The  most  conservative  thinkers  recognize  that  the 
present  organization  of  industry  is  intolerable  in  the 
sacrifice  of  liberty  which  it  entails  upon  the  producer. 
But  each  effort  which  he  makes  to  emancipate  himself 
is  met  by  a  protest  that  if  the  existing  system  is  incom- 
patible with  freedom,  it  at  least  secures  efficient  service, 
and  that  efficient  service  is  threatened  by  movements 
which  aim  at  placing  a  greater  measure  of  industrial 
control  in  the  hands  of  the  workers.  The  attempt  to 
drive  a  wedge  between  the  producer  and  the  consumer 
is  obviously  the  cue  of  all  the  interests  which  are  con- 
scious that  by  themselves  they  are  unable  to  hold  back 


130  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

the  flood.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  during  the  last 
few  months  they  should  have  concentrated  their  efforts 
upon  representing  that  every  advance  in  the  demands 
and  in  the  power  of  any  particular  group  of  workers  is 
a  new  imposition  upon  the  general  body  of  the  public. 
Eminent  persons,  who  are  not  obviously  producing  more 
than  they  consume,  explain  to  the  working  classes  that 
unless  they  produce  more  they  must  consume  less. 
Highly  syndicated  combinations  warn  the  public 
against  the  menace  of  predatory  syndicalism.  The 
owners  of  mines  and  minerals,  in  their  new  role  as  pro- 
tectors of  the  poor,  lament  the  "  selfishness  "  of  the 
miners,  as  though  nothing  but  pure  philanthropy  had 
hitherto  caused  profits  and  royalties  to  be  reluctantly 
accepted  by  themselves. 

The  assumption  upon  which  this  body  of  argument 
rests  is  simple.  It  is  that  the  existing  organization  of 
industry  is  the  safeguard  of  productive  efficiency,  and 
that  from  every  attempt  to  alter  it  the  workers  them- 
selves lose  more  as  consumers  than  they  can  gain  as 
producers.  The  world  has  been  drained  of  its  wealth 
and  demands  abundance  of  goods.  The  workers  de- 
mand a  larger  income,  greater  leisure,  and  a  more  se- 
cure and  dignified  status.  These  two  demands,  it  is 
argued,  are  contradictory.  For  how  can  the  consumer 
be  supplied  with  cheap  goods,  if,  as  a  worker,  he  insists 
on  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours  ?  And  how  can  the 
worker  secure  these  conditions,  if  as  a  consumer,  he 
demands  cheap  goods  ?  So  industry,  it  is  thought, 
moves  in  a  vicious  circle  of  shorter  hours  and  higher 
wages  and  less  production,  which  in  time  must  mean 


THE  "VICIOUS  CIRCLE"  131 

longer  hours  and  lower  wages;  and  every  one  receives 
less,  because  every  one  demands  more. 

The  picture  is  plausible,  but  it  is  fallacious.  It  is 
fallacious  not  merely  in  its  crude  assumption  that  a 
rise  in  wages  necessarily  involves  an  increase  in  costs, 
but  for  another  and  more  fundamental  reason.  In  real- 
ity the  cause  of  economic  confusion  is  not  that  the 
demands  of  producer  and  consumer  meet  in  blunt  op- 
position; for,  if  they  did,  their  incompatibility,  when 
they  were  incompatible,  would  be  obvious,  and  neither 
could  deny  his  responsibility  to  the  other,  however  much 
he  might  seek  to  evade  it.  It  is  that  they  do  not,  but 
that,  as  industry  is  organized  to-day,  what  the  worker 
foregoes  the  general  body  of  consumers  does  not  neces- 
sarily gain,  and  what  the  consumer  pays  the  general 
body  of  workers  does  not  necessarily  receivQ.  If  the 
circle  is  vicious,  its  vice  is  not  that  it  is  closed,  but 
that  it  is  always  half  open,  so  that  part  of  production 
leaks  away  in  consumption  which  adds  nothing  to  pro- 
ductive energies,  and  that  the  producer,  because  he 
knows  this,  does  not  fully  use  even  the  productive  energy 
which  he  commands. 

It  is  the  consciousness  of  this  leak  which  sets  every 
one  at  cross  purposes.  No  conceivable  system  of  indus- 
trial organization  can  secure  industrial  peace,  if  by 
"  peace  "  is  meant  a  complete  absence  of  disagreement. 
What  could  be  secured  would  be  that  disagreements 
should  not  flare  up  into  a  beacon  of  class  warfare.  If 
every  member  of  a  group  puts  something  into  a  common 
pool  on  condition  of  taking  something  out,  they  may  still 
quarrel  about  the  size  of  the  shares,  as  children  quarrel 


132  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

over  cake;  but  if  the  total  is  known  and  the  claims  ad- 
mitted, that  is  all  they  can  quarrel  about,  and,  since 
they  all  stand  on  the  same  footing,  any  one  who  holds 
out  for  more  than  his  fellows  must  show  some  good 
reason  why  he  should  get  it  But  in  industry  the  claims 
are  not  all  admitted,  for  those  who  put  nothing  in  de- 
mand to  take  something  out;  both  the  total  to  be  divided 
and  the  proportion  in  which  the  division  takes  place  are 
sedulously  concealed;  and  those  who  preside  over  the 
distribution  of  the  pool  and  control  what  is  paid  out  of 
it  have  a  direct  interest  in  securing  as  large  a  share  as 
possible  for  themselves  and  in  allotting  as  small  a  share 
as  possible  to  others.  If  one  contributor  takes  less,  so 
far  from  it  being  evident  that  the  gain  will  go  to  some 
one  who  has  put  something  in  and  has  as  good  a  right 
as  himself,  it  may  go  to  some  one  who  has  put  in  nothing 
and  has  no  right  at  all.  If  another  claims  more,  he 
may  secure  it,  without  plundering  a  fellow-worker,  at 
the  expense  of  a  sleeping  partner  who  is  believed  to 
plunder  both.  In  practice,  since  there  is  no  clear  prin- 
ciple determining  what  they  ought  to  take,  both  take  all 
that  they  can  get. 

In  such  circumstances  denunciations  of  the  producer 
for  exploiting  the  consumer  miss  the  mark.  They  are 
inevitably  regarded  as  an  economic  version  of  the  mili- 
tary device  used  by  armies  which  advance  behind  a 
screen  of  women  and  children,  and  then  protest  at  the 
brutality  of  the  enemy  in  shooting  non-combatants. 
They  are  interpreted  as  evidence,  not  that  a  section  of 
the  producers  are  exploiting  the  remainder,  but  that  a 
minority  of  property-owners,  which  is  in  opposition  to 


THE  "VICIOUS  CIRCLE"  133 

both,  can  use  its  economic  power  to  make  efforts  di- 
rected against  those  who  consume  much  and  produce 
little  rebound  on  those  who  consume  little  and  produce 
much.  And  the  grievance,  of  which  the  Press  makes 
so  much,  that  some  workers  may  be  taking  too  large  a 
share  compared  with  others,  is  masked  by  the  much 
greater  grievance,  of  which  it  says  nothing  whatever, 
that  some  idlers  take  any  share  at  all.  The  abolition 
of  payments  which  are  made  without  any  correspond- 
ing economic  service  is  thus  one  of  the  indispensable 
conditions  both  of  economic  efficiency  and  industrial 
peace,  because  their  existence  prevents  different  classes 
of  workers  from  restraining  each  other,  by  uniting  them 
all  against  the  common  enemy.  Either  the  principle  of 
industry  is  that  of  function,  in  which  case  slack  work 
is  only  less  immoral  than  no  work  at  all ;  or  it  is  that  of 
grab,  in  which  case  there  is  no  morality  in  the  matter. 
But  it  cannot  be  both.  And  it  is  useless  either  for  prop- 
erty-owners or  for  Governments  to  lament  the  mote  in 
the  eye  of  the  trade  unions  as  long  as,  by  insisting  on  the 
maintenance  of  functionless  property,  they  decline  to 
remove  the  beam  in  their  own. 

The  truth  is  that  only  workers  can  prevent  the  abuse 
of  power  by  workers,  because  only  workers  are  recog- 
nized as  possessing  any  title  to  have  their  claims  con- 
sidered. And  the  first  step  to  preventing  the  exploita- 
tion of  the  consumer  by  the  producer  is  simple.  It  is 
to  turn  all  men  into  producers,  and  thus  to  remove  the 
temptation  for  particular  groups  of  workers  to  force 
their  claims  at  the  expense  of  the  public,  by  removing 
the  valid  excuse  that  such  gains  as  they  may  set  are 


134  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

taken  from  those  who  at  present  have  no  right  to  them, 
because  they  are  disproportionate  to  service  or  obtained 
for  no  service  at  all.  Indeed,  if  work  were  the  only 
title  to  payment,  the  danger  of  the  community  being  ex- 
ploited by  highly  organized  groups  of  producers  would 
largely  disappear.  For,  when  no  payments  were  made 
to  non-producers,  there  would  be  no  debatable  ground 
for  which  to  struggle,  and  it  would  become  evident  that 
if  any  one  group  of  producers  took  more,  another  must 
put  up  with  less. 

Under  such  conditions  a  body  of  workers  who  used 
their  strong  strategic  position  to  extort  extravagant 
terms  for  themselves  at  the  expense  of  their  fellow- 
workers  might  properly  be  described  as  exploiting  the 
community.  But  at  present  such  a  statement  is  mean- 
ingless. It  is  meaningless  because  before  the  commun- 
ity can  be  exploited  the  community  must  exist,  and  its 
existence  in  the  sphere  of  economics  is  to-day  not  a  fact 
but  only  an  aspiration.  The  procedure  by  which,  when- 
ever any  section  of  workers  advance  demands  which  are 
regarded  as  inconvenient  by  their  masters,  they  are  de- 
nounced as  a  band  of  anarchists  who  are  preying  on  the 
public  may  be  a  convenient  weapon  in  an  emergency, 
but,  once  it  is  submitted  to  analysis,  it  is  logically  self- 
destructive.  It  has  been  applied  within  recent  years,  to 
the  postmen,  to  the  engineers,  to  the  policemen,  to  the 
miners  and  to  the  railway  men,  a  j)opulation  with  their 
dependents,  of  some  eight  million  j)ersons;  and  in  the 
case  of  the  last  two  the  whole  body  of  organized  labor 
made  common  /"ause  with  those  of  whose  exorbitant  de- 
mands it  was  alleged  to  be  the  victim.     But  when  these 


THE  "VICIOUS  CIRCLE"  135 

workers  and  their  sympathizers  are  deducted,  what  is 
"  the  community  "  which  remains  ?  It  is  a  naive  arith- 
metic which  produces  a  total  by  subtracting  one  by 
one  all  the  items  which  compose  it;  and  the  art 
which  discovers  the  public  interest  by  eliminating 
the  interests  of  successive  sections  of  the  public 
smacks  of  the  rhetorician  rather  than  of  the  states- 
man. 

The  truth  is  that  at  present  it  is  idle  to  seek  to  resist 
the  demands  of  any  group  of  workers  by  appeals  to 
"  the  interests  of  society,"  because  to-day,  as  long  as 
the  economic  plane  alone  is  considered,  there  is  not  one 
society  but  two,  which  dwell  together  in  uneasy  juxta- 
position, like  Sinbad  and  the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea,  but 
which  in  spirit,  in  ideals,  and  in  economic  interest,  are 
worlds  asunder.  There  is  the  society  of  those  who  live 
by  labor,  whatever  their  craft  or  profession,  and  the 
society  of  those  who  live  on  it.  All  the  latter  cannot 
command  the  sacrifices  or  the  loyalty  which  are  due  to 
the  former,  for  they  have  no  title  which  will  bear  in- 
spection. The  instinct  to  ignore  that  tragic  division 
instead  of  ending  it  is  amiable,  and  sometimes  generous. 
But  it  is  a  sentimentality  which  is  like  the  morbid 
optimism  of  the  consumptive  who  dares  not  admit  even 
to  himself  the  virulence  of  his  disease.  As  long  as  the 
division  exists,  the  general  body  of  workers,  while  it 
may  suffer  from  the  struggles  of  any  one  group  within 
it,  nevertheless  supports  them  by  its  sympathy,  because 
all  are  interested  in  the  results  of  the  contest  carried 
on  by  each.  Different  sections  of  workers  will  exercise 
mutual   restraint   only   when  the   termination   of  the 


136  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

struggle  leaves  them  face  to  face  with  each  other,  and 
not  as  now,  with  the  common  enemy.  The  ideal  of  a 
united  society  in  which  no  one  group  uses  its  power  to 
encroach  upon  the  standards  of  another  is,  in  short, 
unattainable,  except  through  the  preliminary  abolition 
of  functionless  property. 

Those  to  whom  a  leisure  class  is  part  of  an  im- 
mutable order  without  which  civilization  is  inconceiv- 
able, dare  not  admit,  even  to  themselves,  that  the  world 
is  poorer,  not  richer,  because  of  its  existence.  So,  when, 
as  now  it  is  important  that  productive  energy  should  be 
fully  used,  they  stamp  and  cry,  and  write  to  The  Times 
about  the  necessity  for  increased  production,  though  all 
the  time  they  themselves,  their  way  of  life  and  expendi- 
ture, and  their  very  existence  as  a  leisure  class,  are 
among  the  causes  why  production  is  not  increased.  In 
all  their  economic  plans  they  make  one  reservation,  that, 
however  necessitous  the  world  may  be,  it  shall  still  sup- 
port them.  But  men  who  work  do  not  make  that  reser- 
vation, nor  is  there  any  reason  why  they  should; 
and  appeals  to  them  to  produce  more  wealth  because 
the  public  needs  it  usually  fall  upon  deaf  ears,  even 
when  such  appeals  are  not  involved  in  tlic^  igno- 
rance and  misapprehensions  which  often  characterize 
them. 

For  the  workman  is  not  the  servant  of  the  consumer, 
for  whose  sake  greater  production  is  demanded,  but  of 
shareholders,  whose  primary  aim  is  dividends,  and  to 
whom  all  production,  however  futile  or  frivolous,  so 
long  as  it  yields  dividends,  is  the  same.  It  is  useless  to 
urge  that  he  should  produce  more  wealth  for  the  com- 


THE  "VICIOUS  CIRCLE"  137 

munity,  unless  at  the  same  time  he  is  assured  that  it  is 
the  community  which  "will  benefit  in  proportion  as  more 
wealth  is  produced.  If  every  unnecessary  charge  upon 
coal-getting  had  been  eliminated,  it  would  be  reasonable 
that  the  miners  should  set  a  much  needed  example  by 
refusing  to  extort  better  terms  for  themselves  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  public.  But  there  is  no  reason  why  they 
should  work  for  lower  wages  or  longer  hours  as  long  as 
those  who  are  to-day  responsible  for  the  management 
of  the  industry  conduct  it  with  "  the  extravagance  and 
waste  "  stigmatized  by  the  most  eminent  ofiicial  witness 
before  the  Coal  Commission,  or  why  the  consumer 
should  grumble  at  the  rapacity  of  the  miner  as  long  as 
he  allows  himself  to  be  mulcted  by  swollen  profits,  the 
costs  of  an  ineffective  organization,  and  unnecessary 
payments  to  superfluous  middlemen. 

If  to-day  the  miner  or  any  other  workman  produces 
more,  he  has  no  guarantee  that  the  result  will  be  lower 
prices  rather  than  higher  dividends  and  larger  royal- 
ties, any  more  than,  as  a  workman,  he  can  determine 
the  quality  of  the  wares  which  his  employer  supplies  to 
customers,  or  the  price  at  which  they  are  sold.  Nor, 
as  long  as  he  is  directly  the  servant  of  a  profit-making 
company,  and  only  indirectly  the  servant  of  the  com- 
munity, can  any  such  guarantee  be  offered  him.  It  can 
be  offered  only  in  so  far  as  he  stands  in  an  immediate 
and  direct  relation  to  the  public  for  whom  industry  is 
carried  on,  so  that,  when  all  costs  have  been  met,  any 
surplus  wiU  pass  to  it,  and  not  to  private  individuals. 
It  will  be  accepted  only  in  so  far  as  the  workers  in  each 
industry  are  not  merely  servants  executing  orders,  but 


138  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

themselves  have  a  collective  responsibility  for  the  char- 
acter of  the  sen-ice,  and  can  use  their  organizations  nut 
merely  to  protect  themselves  against  exploitation,  but 
to  make  positive  contributions  to  the  administration  and 
development  of  their  industry. 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY 

Thus  it  is  not  only  for  the  sake  of  the  producers,  on 
whom  the  old  industrial  order  weighed  most  heavily, 
that  a  new  industrial  order  is  needed.  It  is  needed  for 
the  sake  of  the  consumers,  because  the  ability  on  which 
the  old  industrial  order  prided  itself  most  and  which 
is  flaunted  most  as  an  argument  against  change,  the 
ability  to  serve  them  effectively,  is  itself  visibly  break- 
ing down.  It  is  breaking  down  at  what  was  always  its 
most  vulnerable  point,  the  control  of  the  human  beings 
whom,  with  characteristic  indifference  to  all  but  their 
economic  significance,  it  distilled  for  its  own  purposes 
into  an  abstraction  called  "  Labor."  The  first  symptom 
of  its  collapse  is  what  the  first  symptom  of  economic 
collapses  has  usually  been  in  the  past — the  failure  of 
customary  stimuli  to  evoke  their  customary  response  in 
human  effort. 

Till  that  failure  is  recognized  and  industry  reorgan- 
ized so  that  new  stimuli  may  have  free  play,  the  col- 
lapse will  not  correct  itself,  but,  doubtless  with  spas- 
modic revivals  and  flickerings  of  energy,  will  continue 
and  accelerate.  The  cause  of  it  is  simple.  It  is  that 
those  whose  business  it  is  to  direct  economic  activity  are 
increasingly  incapable  of  directing  the  men  upon  whom 
economic  activity  depends.  The  fault  is  not  that  of  in- 
dividuals,  but   of   a   system,    of   Industrialism   itself. 

139 


140  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

During  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  in- 
dustry was  driven  by  two  forces,  hunger  and  fear,  and 
the  employer  commanded  them  both.  He  could  grant 
or  withhold  employment  as  he  pleased.  If  men  revolted 
against  his  terms  he  could  dismiss  them,  and  if  they 
were  dismissed  what  confronted  them  was  starvation 
or  the  workhouse.  Authority  was  centralized ;  its  in- 
struments were  passive;  the  one  thing  which  they 
dreaded  was  unemployment.  And  since  they  could 
neither  prevent  its  occurrence  nor  do  more  than  a  little 
to  mitigate  its  horrors  when  it  occurred,  they  submitted 
to  a  discipline  which  they  could  not  resist,  and  industry 
pursued  its  course  through  their  passive  acquiescence 
in  a  power  which  could  crush  them  individually  if  they 
attempted  to  oppose  it. 

That  system  might  be  lauded  as  efficient  or  denounced 
as  inhuman.  But,  at  least,  as  its  admirers  were  never 
tired  of  pointing  out,  it  worked.  And,  like  the  Prussian 
State,  which  alike  in  its  virtues  and  deficiencies  it  not 
a  little  resembled,  as  long  as  it  worked  it  survived  de- 
nunciations of  its  methods,  as  a  strong  man  will  throw 
off  a  disease.  But  to-day  it  is  ceasing  to  have  even  the 
qualities  of  its  defects.  It  is  ceasing  to  be  efficient.  It 
no  longer  secures  the  ever-increasing  output  of  wealth 
which  it  offered  in  its  golden  prime,  and  which  enabled 
it  to  silence  criticism  by  an  imposing  spectacle  of  ma- 
terial success.  Though  it  still  works,  it  works  unevenly, 
amid  constant  friction  and  jolts  and  stoppages,  without 
the  confidence  of  the  public  and  without  full  confidence 
even  in  itself,  a  tyrant  who  must  intrigue  and  cajole 
where  fonnerlv  he  coniinaiuled,  a  gaoler  who,  if  not  yet 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         141 

deprived  of  whip,  dare  only  administer  moderate  chas- 
tisement, and  who,  though  he  still  protests  that  he 
alone  can  keep  the  treadmill  moving  and  get  the  corn 
ground,  is  compelled  to  surrender  so  much  of  his  author- 
ity as  to  make  it  questionable  whether  he  is  worth  his 
keep.  For  the  instruments  through  which  Capitalism 
exercised  discipline  are  one  by  one  being  taken  from 
it.  It  cannot  pay  what  wages  it  likes  or  work  what 
hours  it  likes.  In  well-organized  industries  the  power 
of  arbitrary  dismissal,  the  very  center  of  its  authority, 
is  being  shaken,  because  men  will  no  longer  tolerate  a 
system  which  makes  their  livelihood  dependent  on  the 
caprices  of  an  individual.  In  all  industries  alike  the 
time  is  not  far  distant  when  the  dread  of  starvation  can 
no  longer  be  used  to  cow  dissatisfied  workers  into  sub- 
mission, because  the  public  will  no  longer  allow  invol- 
untary unemployment  to  result  in  starvation. 

And  if  Capitalism  is  losing  its  control  of  men's  bodies, 
still  more  has  it  lost  its  command  of  their  minds.  The 
product  of  a  civilization  which  regarded  "  the  poor  "  as 
instruments,  at  worst  of  the  luxuries,  at  best  of  the  vir- 
tues, of  the  rich,  its  psychological  foundation  fifty  years 
ago  was  an  ignorance  in  the  mass  of  mankind  which  led 
them  to  reverence  as  wisdom  the  very  follies  of  their 
masters,  and  an  almost  animal  incapacity  for  responsi- 
bility. Education  and  experience  have  destroyed  the 
passivity  which  was  the  condition  of  the  perpetuation 
of  industrial  government  in  the  hands  of  an  oligarchy 
of  private  capitalists.  The  workman  of  to-day  has  as 
little  belief  in  the  intellectual  superiority  of  many  of 
those  who  direct  industry  as  he  has  in  the  morality  of 


142  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

the  system.  It  appear?  to  him  to  be  not  only  oppres- 
sive, but  wasteful,  unintelligent  and  inefficient.  In  the 
light  of  his  own  experience  in  the  factory  and  tho 
mine,  he  regards  the  claim  of  the  capitalist  to  be  the 
self-appointed  guardian  of  public  interests  as  a  piece  of 
sanctimonious  hypocrisy.  For  he  sees  every  day  that 
efficiency  is  sacrificed  to  shortsighted  financial  interests; 
and  while  as  a  man  he  is  outraged  by  the  inhumanity  of 
the  industrial  order,  as  a  professional  who  knows  the 
difference  between  good  work  and  bad  he  has  a  growing 
contempt  at  once  for  its  misplaced  parsimony  and  its 
misplaced  extravagance,  for  the  whole  apparatus  of 
adulteration,  advertisement  and  quackery  which  seems 
inseparable  from  the  pursuit  of  profit  as  the  main  stand- 
ard of  industrial  success. 

So  Capitalism  no  longer  secures  strenuous  work  by 
fear,  for  it  is  ceasing  to  be  formidable.  And  it  can- 
not secure  it  by  respect,  for  it  has  ceased  to  be  re- 
spected. And  the  very  victories  by  which  it  seeks  to 
reassert  its  waning  prestige  are  more  disastrous  than 
defeats.  Employers  may  congratulate  themselves  that 
they  have  maintained  intact  their  right  to  freedom  of 
management,  or  opposed  successfully  a  demand  for 
public  ownership,  or  broken  a  movement  for  higher 
wages  and  shorter  hours.  But  what  is  success  in  a  trade 
dispute  or  in  a  political  struggle  is  often  a  defeat  in 
tho  workshop:  the  workmen  may  have  lost,  but  it  does 
not  follow  that  their  employers,  still  less  that  the  pub- 
lic, which  is  principally  composed  of  workmen,  have 
won.  For  the  object  of  industry  is  to  produce  goods, 
and  to  produce  them  at  the  lowest  cost  in  human  effort. 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         143 

But  there  is  no  alchemy  which  will  secure  efficient  pro- 
duction from  the  resentment  or  distrust  of  men  who 
feel  contempt  for  the  order  under  which  they  work. 
It  is  a  commonplace  that  credit  is  the  foundation  of 
industry.  But  credit  is  a  matter  of  psychology,  and 
the  workman  has  his  psychology  as  well  as  the  capitalist. 
If  confidence  is  necessary  to  the  investment  of  capital, 
confidence  is  not  less  necessary  to  the  effective  perform- 
ance of  labor  by  men  whose  sole  livelihood  depends  upon 
it.  If  they  are  not  yet  strong  enough  to  impose  their 
will,  they  are  strong  enough  to  resist  when  their  masters 
would  impose  theirs.  They  may  work  rather  than  strike. 
But  they  will  work  to  escape  dismissal,  not  for  the 
greater  glory  of  a  system  in  which  they  do  not  believe; 
and,  if  they  are  dismissed,  those  who  take  their  place 
will  do  the  same. 

That  this  is  one  cause  of  a  low  output  has  been  stated 
both  by  employers  and  workers  in  the  building  industry, 
and  by  the  representatives  of  the  miners  before  the  Coal 
Commission.  It  was  reiterated  with  impressive  em- 
phasis by  Mr.  Justice  Sankey.  Nor  is  it  seriously  con- 
tested by  employers  themselves.  What  else,  indeed,  do 
their  repeated  denunciations  of  "  restriction  of  output " 
mean  except  that  they  have  failed  to  organize  industry 
so  as  to  secure  the  efficient  service  which  it  is  their 
special  function  to  provide?  Nor  is  it  appropriate  to 
the  situation  to  indulge  in  full-blooded  denunciations 
of  the  "  selfishness  "  of  the  working  classes.  "  To  draw 
an  indictment  against  a  whole  nation  "  is  a  procedure 
which  is  as  impossible  in  industry  as  it  is  in  politics. 
Institutions  must  be  adapted  to   human  nature,  not 


144  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

human  nature  to  institutions.  If  tho  cflFcct  of  the  indus- 
trial system  is  such  that  a  larpo  and  increasing  number 
of  ordinary  men  and  women  find  that  it  otTers  them  no 
adequate  motive  for  economic  effort,  it  is  mere  pedantry 
to  denounce  men  and  women  instead  of  amending  the 
system. 

Thus  the  time  has  come  wlien  absolutism  in  industry 
may  still  win  its  battles,  but  loses  the  campaign,  and 
loses  it  on  the  very  ground  of  economic  efficiency  which 
was  of  its  own  selection.  In  the  period  of  transition, 
wliile  economic  activity  is  distracted  by  the  struggle  be- 
tween those  who  have  the  name  and  habit  of  power,  but 
no  longer  the  full  reality  of  it,  and  those  who  are  daily 
winning  more  of  the  reality  of  power  but  are  not  yet 
its  recognized  repositories,  it  is  the  consumer  who 
suffers,  lie  has  neither  the  service  of  docile  obedience, 
nor  the  service  of  intelligent  co-operation.  For  slavery 
will  work — as  long  as  the  slaves  will  let  it ;  and  freedom 
will  work  when  men  have  learned  to  be  free;  but  what 
will  not  work  is  a  combination  of  tlie  two.  So  the 
public  goes  short  of  coal  not  only  because  of  the  techni- 
cal deficiencies  of  the  system  under  which  it  is  raised 
and  distributed,  but  l)ecause  the  system  itself  has  lost 
its  driving  force — because  the  coal  owners  can  no  longer 
persuade  the  miners  into  producing  more  dividends  for 
them  and  more  royalties  for  the  owners  of  minerals, 
while  the  public  cannot  appeal  to  them  to  put  their 
whole  power  into  serving  itself,  because  it  has  chosen 
that  they  should  be  the  servants,  not  of  itself,  but  of 
Bhareholders. 

And,  this  dilemma  is  not,  as  some  suppose,  tempo- 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         Ub 

rary,  the  aftermath  of  war,  or  peculiar  to  the  coal  in- 
dustry, as  though  the  miners  alone  were  the  children  of 
sin  which  in  the  last  few  months  they  have  heen  de- 
scribed to  be.  It  is  permanent ;  it  has  spread  far ;  and, 
as  sleeping  spirits  are  stirred  into  life  by  education  and 
one  industry  after  another  develops  a  strong  corporate 
consciousness,  it  will  spread  further.  Nor  will  it  be 
resolved  by  lamentations  or  menaces  or  denunciations  of 
leaders  whose  only  significance  is  that  they  say  openly 
what  plain  men  feel  privately.  For  the  matter  at  bot- 
tom is  one  of  psychology.  What  has  happened  is  that 
the  motives  on  which  the  industrial  system  relied  for 
several  generations  to  secure  efficiency,  secure  it  no 
longer.  And  it  is  as  impossible  to  restore  them,  to 
revive  by  mere  exhortation  the  complex  of  hopes  and 
fears  and  ignorance  and  patient  credulity  and  passive 
acquiescence,  which  together  made  men,  fifty  years 
ago,  plastic  instruments  in  the  hands  of  industrialism, 
as  to  restore  innocence  to  any  others  of  those  who  have 
eaten  of  the  tree  of  knowledge. 

The  ideal  of  some  intelligent  and  respectable  business 
men,  the  restoration  of  the  golden  sixties,  when  workmen 
were  docile  and  confiding,  and  trade  unions  were  still 
half  illegal,  and  foreign  competition  meant  English  com- 
petition in  foreign  coui)tries,  and  prices  were  rising  a 
little  and  not  rising  too  much,  is  the  one  Utopia  which 
can  never  be  realized.  The  King  may  walk  naked  as 
long  as  his  courtiers  protest  that  he  is  clad;  but  when 
a  child  or  a  fool  has  broken  the  spell  a  tailor  is  more 
important  than  all  their  admiration.  If  the  public, 
which  suffers  from  the  slackening  of  economic  activity, 


14fi  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

desires  to  end  its  malaise,  it  will  not  laud  as  admirable 
and  all-sufficient  the  operation  of  motives  which  are 
plainly  ceasing  to  move.  It  will  seek  to  liberate  new 
motives  and  to  enlist  them  in  its  service.  It  will  en- 
deavor to  find  an  alternative  to  incentives  which  were 
always  degrading,  to  those  who  used  them  as  much  as  to 
those  upon  whom  they  were  used,  and  which  now  are 
adequate  incentives  no  longer.  And  the  alternative 
to  the  discipline  which  Capitalism  exercised  through  its 
instruments  of  unemployment  and  starvation  is  the  self- 
discipline  of  responsibility  and  professional  pride. 

So  the  demand  which  aims  at  stronger  organization, 
fuller  responsibility,  larger  powers  for  the  sake  of  the 
producer  as  a  condition  of  economic  liberty,  the  demand 
for  freedom,  is  not  antithetic  to  the  demand  for  more 
effective  work  and  increased  output  which  is  being  made 
in  the  interests  of  the  consumer.  It  is  compkinentarj 
to  it,  as  the  insistence  by  a  body  of  professional  men, 
whether  doctors  or  university  teachers,  on  the  mainte- 
nance of  their  professional  independence  and  dignity 
against  attempts  to  cheapen  the  service  is  not  hostile 
to  an  efficient  service,  but,  in  the  long  run,  a  condition 
of  it.  The  course  of  wisdom  for  the  consumer  would 
be  to  hasten,  so  far  as  he  can,  the  transition.  For,  as 
at  present  conducted,  industry  is  working  against  the 
grain.  It  is  compassing  sea  and  land  in  its  efforts  to 
overcome,  by  ingenious  financial  and  technical  expedi- 
ents, obstacles  which  should  never  have  existed.  It  is 
trying  to  produce  its  results  by  conquering  professional 
feeling  instead  of  using  it.  It  is  carrying  not  only  its 
inevitable   economie    burdens,    but    an    ever   increasing 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         147 

load  of  ill  will  and  skepticism.  It  has  in  fact  "  shot 
the  bird  which  caused  the  wind  to  blow  "  and  goes  about 
its  business  with  the  corpse  round  its  neck.  Compared 
with  that  psychological  incubus,  the  technical  deficien- 
cies of  industry,  serious  though  they  often  are,  are  a 
bagatelle,  and  the  business  men  who  preach  the  gospel 
of  production  without  offering  any  plan  for  dealing  with 
what  is  now  the  central  fact  in  the  economic  situation, 
resemble  a  Christian  apologist  who  should  avoid  dis- 
turbing the  equanimity  of  his  audience  by  carefulUy 
omitting  all  reference  either  to  the  fall  of  man  or  the 
scheme  of  salvation.  If  it  is  desired  to  increase  the  out- 
put of  wealth,  it  is  not  a  paradox,  but  the  statement  of 
an  elementary  economic  truism  to  say  that  active  and 
constructive  co-operation  on  the  part  of  the  rank  and 
file  of  workers  would  do  more  to  contribute  to  that 
result  than  the  discovery  of  a  new  coal-field  or  a  genera- 
tion of  scientific  invention. 

The  first  condition  of  enlisting  on  the  side  of  con- 
structive work  the  professional  feeling  which  is  now 
apathetic,  or  even  hostile  to  it,  is  to  secure  that  when 
it  is  given  its  results  accrue  to  the  public,  not  to  the 
owner  of  property  in  capital,  in  land,  or  in  other  re- 
sources. For  this  reason  the  attenuation  of  the  rights 
at  present  involved  in  the  private  ownership  of  indus- 
trial capital,  or  their  complete  abolition,  is  not  the  de- 
mand of  idealogues,  but  an  indispensable  element  in  a 
policy  of  economic  efficiency,  since  it  is  the  condition  of 
the  most  effective  functioning  of  the  human  beings  upon 
whom,  though,  like  other  truisms,  it  is  often  forgotten. 


148  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

economic  efficiency  ultimately  depends.  But  it  is  only 
one  element.  Co-operation  may  range  from  mere  ac- 
quiescence to  a  vigilant  and  zealous  initiative.  The 
criterion  of  an  effective  system  of  administration  is  that 
it  should  succeed  in  enlisting  in  the  conduct  of  indus- 
try the  latent  forces  of  professional  pride  to  which  the 
present  industrial  order  makes  little  appeal,  and  which, 
indeed,  Capitalism,  in  its  war  upon  trade  union  organi- 
zation, endeavored  for  many  years  to  stamp  out  alto- 
gether. 

Nor  does  the  efficacy  of  such  an  appeal  repose  upon 
the  assumption  of  that  "  change  in  human  nature," 
which  is  the  triumphant  rcductio  ad  ahsurdum  ad- 
vanced by  those  who  are  least  satisfied  with  the  work- 
ing of  human  nature  as  it  is.  What  it  does  involve  is 
that  certain  elementary  facts  should  be  taken  into  ac- 
count, instead  of,  as  at  present,  being  ignored.  That 
all  work  is  distasteful  and  that  "  every  man  desires  to 
secure  the  largest  income  with  the  least  effort  "  may  be 
as  axiomatic  as  it  is  assumed  to  be.  But  in  practice  it 
makes  all  the  difference  to  the  attitude  of  the  individual 
whether  the  collective  sentiment  of  the  group  to  which 
he  belongs  is  on  the  side  of  effort  or  against  it,  and 
what  standard  of  effort  it  sets.  That,  as  employers 
complain,  the  public  opinion  of  considerable  groups  of 
workers  is  against  an  intensification  of  effort  as  long 
as  part  of  its  result  is  increased  dividends  for  share- 
holders, is  no  doubt,  as  far  as  mere  efficiency  is  con- 
cerned, the  gravest  indictment  of  the  existing  industrial 
order.  But,  even  when  public  ownership  has  taken  the 
place  of  private  capitalism,  its  ability  to  command  ef- 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         149 

fective  service  will  depend  ultimately  upon  its  success 
in  securing  not  merely  that  professional  feeling  is  no 
longer  an  opposing  force,  but  that  it  is  actively  enlisted 
upon  the  side  of  maintaining  the  highest  possible  stand- 
ard of  efficiency  which  can  reasonably  be  demanded. 

To  put  the  matter  concretely,  while  the  existing  own- 
ership of  mines  is  a  positive  inducement  to  inefficient 
work,  public  ownership  administered  by  a  bureaucracy, 
if  it  would  remove  the  technical  deficiencies  emphasized 
by  Sir  Richai'd  Redmayne  as  inseparable  from  the  sepa- 
rate administration  of  3,000  pits  by  1,500  different 
companies,  would  be  only  too  likely  to  miss  a  capital 
advantage  which  a  different  type  of  administration 
would  secure.  It  would  lose  both  the  assistance  to  be 
derived  from  the  technical  knowledge  of  practical  men 
who  know  by  daily  experience  the  points  at  which  the 
details  of  administration  can  be  improved,  and  the 
stimulus  to  efficiency  springing  from  the  corporate  pride 
of  a  profession  which  is  responsible  for  maintaining  and 
improving  the  character  of  its  service.  Professional 
spirit  is  a  force  like  gravitation,  which  in  itself  is 
neither  good  nor  bad,  but  which  the  engineer  uses,  when 
he  can,  to  do  his  work  for  him.  If  it  is  foolish  to 
idealize  it,  it  is  equally  shortsighted  to  neglect  it.  In 
what  are  described  'par  excellence  as  "  the  services  "  it 
has  always  been  recognized  that  esprit  de  corps  is  the 
foundation  of  efficiency,  and  all  means,  some  wise  and 
some  mischievous,  are  used  to  encourage  it :  in  prac- 
tice, indeed,  the  power  upon  which  the  country  relied 
as  its  main  safeguard  in  an  emergency  was  the  pro- 
fessional zeal  of  the  navy  and  nothing  else.     Nor  is 


150  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

that  spirit  peculiar  to  the  professions  which  are  con- 
cerned with  war.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  training, 
common  responsibilities,  and  common  dangers.  In  all 
cases  where  difficult  and  disagreeable  work  is  to  be  done, 
the  force  which  elicits  it  is  normally  not  merely  money, 
but  the  public  opinion  and  tradition  of  the  little  society 
in  which  the  individual  moves,  and  in  the  esteem  of 
which  he  finds  that  which  men  value  in  success. 

To  ignore  that  most  powerful  of  stimuli  as  it  is 
ignored  to-day,  and  then  to  lament  that  the  efforts  which 
it  produces  are  not  forthcoming,  is  the  climax  of  per- 
versity. To  aim  at  eliminating  from  industry  the 
growth  and  action  of  corporate  feeling,  for  fear  lest  an 
organized  body  of  producers  should  exploit  the  public,  is 
a  plausible  policy.  But  it  is  short-sighted.  It  is  "  to 
pour  away  the  baby  with  the  bath,"  and  to  lower  the 
quality  of  the  service  in  an  attempt  to  safeguard  it. 
A  wise  system  of  administration  would  recognize  that 
professional  solidarity  can  do  much  of  its  work  for  it 
more  effectively  than  it  can  do  it  itself,  because  the 
spirit  of  his  profession  is  part  of  the  individual  and  not 
a  force  outside  him,  and  would  make  it  its  object  to 
enlist  that  temper  in  the  public  service.  It  is  only  by 
that  policy,  indeed,  that  the  elaboration  of  cumbrous 
regulations  to  prevent  men  doing  what  they  should  not, 
with  the  incidental  result  of  sometimes  preventing  them 
from  doing  what  they  should — it  is  only  by  that  policy 
that  what  is  incchanical  and  obstructive  in  bureaucracy 
can  be  averted.  For  industry  cannot  run  without  laws. 
It  must  either  control  itself  by  professional  standards, 
or  it  must  bo  controlled  by  officials  who  are  not  of  the 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         151 

craft  and  who,  however  zealous  and  well-meaning,  can 
hardly  have  the  feel  of  it  in  their  fingers.  Public  con- 
trol and  criticism  are  indispensable.  But  they  should 
not  be  too  detailed,  or  they  defeat  themselves.  It 
would  be  better  that,  once  fair  standards  have  been 
established,  the  professional  organization  should  check 
offenses  against  prices  and  quality  than  that  it  should 
be  necessary  for  the  State  to  do  so.  The  alternative  to 
minute  external  supervision  is  supervision  from  within 
by  men  who  become  imbued  with  the  public  obligations 
of  their  trade  in  the  very  process  of  learning  it.  It  is, 
in  short,  professional  in  industry. 

For  this  reason  collectivism  by  itself  is  too  simple  a 
solution.  Its  failure  is  likely  to  be  that  of  other  ration- 
alist systems. 

"Dann  hat  er  die  Theile  in  seiner  Hand, 
Fehlt  leider !  nur  das  geistige  Band." 

If  industrial  reorganization  is  to  be  a  living  reality,  and 
not  merely  a  plan  upon  paper,  its  aim  must  be  to  secure 
not  only  that  industry  is  carried  on  for  the  service  of 
the  public,  but  that  it  shall  be  carried  on  with  the 
active  co-operation  of  the  organizations  of  producers. 
But  co-operation  involves  responsibility,  and  responsi- 
bility involves  power.  It  is  idle  to  expect  that  men  will 
give  their  best  to  any  system  which  they  do  not  trust, 
or  that  they  will  trust  any  system  in  the  control  of 
which  they  do  not  share.  Their  ability  to  carry  pro- 
fessional obligations  depends  upon  the  power  which 
they  possess  to  remove  the  obstacles  which  prevent  those 
obligations  from  being  discharged,  and  upon  their  will- 
ingness, when  they  possess  the  power,  to  use  it. 


162  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

Two  causes  appear  to  havo  hanipored  the  committees 
which  were  established  in  eoimeetion  with  coal  minee 
during  the  war  to  increase  the  output  of  coal.  One  was 
the  reluctance  of  some  of  them  to  discharge  the  invidious 
task  of  imposing  penalties  for  absenteeism  on  their 
fellow-workmen.  The  other  was  the  exclusion  of  faults 
of  management  from  the  control  of  many  committees. 
In  some  cases  all  went  well  till  they  demanded  that,  if 
the  miners  were  penalized  for  absenteeism  which  was 
duo  to  them,  the  management  should  be  penalized  simi- 
larly when  men  who  desired  to  work  were  sent  home 
because,  as  a  result  of  defective  organization,  there  was 
no  work  for  them  to  do.  Their  demand  was  resisted  as 
"  interference  with  the  management,"  and  the  attempt 
to  enforce  regularity  of  attendance  broke  down.  Xor,  to 
take  another  example  from  the  same  industry,  is  it  to 
be  expected  that  the  weight  of  the  miners'  organization 
will  be  thrown  on  to  the  side  of  greater  production,  if 
it  has  no  power  to  insist  on  the  removal  of  the  defects 
of  equipment  and  organization,  the  shortage  of  trams, 
rails,  tubs  and  timber,  the  "  creaming  "  of  the  pits  by 
the  working  of  easily  got  coal  to  their  future  detriment, 
their  wasteful  layout  caused  by  the  vagaries  of  separate 
ownership,  by  which  at  present  the  output  is  reduced. 

The  public  cannot  have  it  both  ways.  If  it  allows 
workmen  to  be  treated  as  "hands"  it  cannot  claim  the 
service  of  their  wills  and  their  brains.  If  it  desires 
them  to  show  the  zeal  of  skilled  professionals,  it  must 
secure  that  they  have  sufficient  power  to  allow  of  their 
discharging  professional  responsibilities.  In  order  that 
workmen  may  abolish  any  restrictions  on  output  which 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         153 

may  be  imposed  by  them,  they  must  be  able  to  insist  on 
the  abolition  of  the  restrictions,  more  mischievous  be- 
cause more  effective,  which,  as  the  Committee  on  Trusts 
has  recently  told  us,  are  imposed  by  organizations  of 
employers.  In  order  that  the  miners'  leaders,  instead 
of  merely  bargaining  as  to  wages,  hours  and  working 
conditions,  may  be  able  to  appeal  to  their  members  to 
increase  the  supply  of  coal,  they  must  be  in  a  position 
to  secure  the  removal  of  the  causes  of  low  output  which 
are  due  to  the  deficiencies  of  the  management,  and 
which  are  to-day  a  far  more  serious  obstacle  than  any 
reluctance  on  the  part  of  the  miner.  If  the  workmen 
in  the  building  trade  are  to  take  combined  action  to 
accelerate  production,  they  must  as  a  body  be  consulted 
as  to  the  purpose  to  which  their  energy  is  to  be  applied, 
and  must  not  be  expected  to  build  fashionable  houses, 
when  what  are  required  are  six-roomed  cottages  to 
house  families  which  are  at  present  living  with  three 
persons  to  a  room. 

It  is  deplorable,  indeed,  that  any  human  beings 
should  consent  to  degrade  themselves  by  producing  the 
articles  which  a  considerable  number  of  workmen  turn 
out  to-day,  boots  which  are  partly  brown  paper,  and 
furniture  which  is  not  fit  to  use.  The  revenge  of  out- 
raged humanity  is  certain,  though  it  is  not  always 
obvious;  and  the  penalty  paid  by  the  consumer  for 
tolerating  an  organization  of  industry  which,  in  the 
name  of  efiiciency,  destroyed  the  responsibility  of  the  \ 
workman,  is  that  the  service  with  which  he  is  provided 
is  not  even  efiicient.  He  has  always  paid  it,  though  he 
has  not  seen  it,  in  quality.     To-day  he  is  beginning  to 


154  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

rcalizo  that  he  is  likely  to  pay  it  in  quantity  as  well. 
If  the  public  is  to  get  efficient  service,  it  can  get  it  only 
from  human  Ixiings,  with  the  initiative  and  caprices  of 
human  beings.  It  will  get  it,  in  short,  in  so  far  as  it 
treats  industry  as  a  responsible  profession. 

The  collective  responsibility  of  the  workers  for  the 
nuiintenance  of  the  standards  of  their  profession  is, 
then,  the  alternative  to  the  discipline  which  Capitalism 
exercised  in  the  past,  and  which  is  now  breaking  down. 
It  involves  a  fundamental  change  in  the  position  both 
of  employers  and  of  trade  unions.  As  long  as  the  direc- 
tion of  industry  is  in  the  hands  of  property-owners  or 
their  agents,  who  are  concerned  to  extract  from  it  the 
maximum  profit  for  themselves,  a  trade  union  is  neces- 
sarily a  defensive  organization.  Absorbed,  on  the  one 
hand,  in  the  struggle  to  resist  the  downward  thrust  of 
Capitalism  upon  the  workers'  standard  of  life,  and  de- 
nounced, on  the  other,  if  it  presumes,  to  "  interfere  with 
management,"  even  when  management  is  most  obviously 
inefficient,  it  is  an  oppo.sition  which  never  becomes  a 
government  and  which  has  neither  the  will  nor  the  ])ower 
to  assume  responsibility  for  the  quality  of  the  service 
offered  to  the  consumer.  If  the  abolition  of  functionless 
property  transferred  the  control  of  production  to  bodies 
representing  those  who  perform  constructive  work  and 
those  who  consume  th(  goods  produced,  the  relation  of 
the  worker  to  the  public  would  no  longer  be  indirect 
but  immediate,  and  associations  which  are  now  purely 
defensive  would  be  in  a  position  not  merely  to  criticize 
and  oppose  but  to  advi-;^,  to  initiate  and  to  enforce  upon 
their  own  members  the  obligations  of  the  craft. 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         155 

It  is  obvious  that  in  such  circumstances  the  service 
offered  the  consumer,  however  carefully  safeguarded  by 
his  representation  on  the  authorities  controlling  each  in- 
dustry, would  depend  primarily  upon  the  success  of 
professional  organizations  in  finding  a  substitute  for 
the  discipline  exercised  to-day  by  the  agents  of  prop- 
erty-owners. It  would  be  necessary  for  them  to  main- 
tain by  their  own  action  the  zeal,  efficiency  and  profes- 
sional pride  which,  when  the  barbarous  weapons  of  the 
nineteenth  century  have  been  discarded,  would  be  the 
only  guarantee  of  a  high  level  of  production.  Nor,  once 
this  new  function  has  been  made  possible  for  profes- 
sional organizations,  is  there  any  extravagance  in  ex- 
pecting them  to  perform  it  with  reasonable  competence. 
How  far  economic  motives  are  balked  to-day  and  could 
be  strengthened  by  a  different  type  of  industrial  organi- 
zation, to  what  extent,  and  under  what  conditions,  it  is 
possible  to  enlist  in  the  services  of  industry  motives 
which  are  not  purely  economic,  can  be  ascertained  only 
after  a  study  of  the  psychology  of  work  which  has  not 
yet  been  made.  Such  a  study,  to  be  of  value,  must 
start  by  abandoning  the  conventional  assumptions,  popu- 
larized by  economic  textbooks  and  accepted  as  self-evi- 
dent by  practical  men,  that  the  motives  to  effort  are 
simple  and  constant  in  character,  like  the  pressure  of 
steam  in  a  boiler,  that  they  are  identical  throughout  all 
ranges  of  economic  activity,  from  the  stock  exchange 
to  the  shunting  of  wagons  or  laying  of  bricks,  and  that 
they  can  be  elicited  and  strengthened  only  by  directly 
economic  incentives.  In  so  far  as  motives  in  industry 
have  been  considered  hitherto,  it  has  usually  been  done 


156  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

by  writers  who,  like  most  exponents  of  scientific  man- 
agement, have  started  by  assuming  that  the  categories 
of  business  psychology  could  be  offered  with  equal  suc- 
cess to  all  classes  of  workers  and  to  all  types  of  produc- 
tive work.  Those  categories  appear  to  be  derived  from 
a  simplified  analysis  of  the  mental  processes  of  the  com- 
pany promoter,  financier  or  investor,  and  their  validity 
as  an  interpretation  of  the  motives  and  habits  which 
determine  the  attitude  to  his  work  of  the  bricklayer, 
the  miner,  the  dock  laborer  or  the  engineer,  is  precisely 
the  point  in  question. 

Clearly  there  are  certain  types  of  industry  to  which 
they  are  only  partially  relevant.  It  can  hardly  be  as- 
sumed, for  example,  that  the  degree  of  skill  and  energy 
brought  to  his  work  by  a  surgeon,  a  scientific  investi- 
gator, a  teacher,  a  medical  ofiicer  of  health,  an  Indian 
civil  senant  and  a  peasant  proprietor  are  capable  of 
being  exprcssfd  precisely  and  to  the  same  degree  in 
terms  of  the  economic  advantage  which  those  different 
occupations  offer.  Obviously  those  who  pursue  them 
are  influenced  to  some  considerable,  though  uncertain, 
extent  by  economic  inecTit  ive^.  Obviously,  again,  the 
precise  character  of  each  process  or  step  in  the  exercise 
of  their  respective  avocations,  the  performance  of  an 
operation,  the  carrying  out  of  a  piece  of  investigation, 
the  selection  of  a  particular  type  of  educational  method, 
the  preparation  of  a  report,  the  decision  of  a  case  or  the 
care  of  live  stock,  is  not  immediately  dependent  upon 
an  exact  calculation  of  pecuniary  L^iiin  or  loss.  What 
appears  to  be  the  case  is  that  in  certain  walks  of  life, 
while  the  occupation  is  chosen  after  a  consideration  of 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         157 

its  economic  advantages,  and  while  economic  reasons 
exact  the  minimum  degree  of  activity  needed  to  avert 
dismissal  from  it  or  "  failure/'  the  actual  level  of 
energy  or  proficiency  displayed  depend  largely  upon 
conditions  of  a  different  order.  Among  them  are  the 
character  of  the  training  received  before  and  after 
entering  the  occupation,  the  customary  standard  of 
effort  demanded  by  the  public  opinion  of  one's  fellows, 
the  desire  for  the  esteem  of  the  small  circle  in  which 
the  individual  moves  and  to  be  recognized  as  having 
"  made  good  "  and  not  to  have  "  failed,"  interest  in 
one's  work,  ranging  from  devotion  to  a  determination 
to  *'  do  justice  "  to  it,  the  pride  of  the  craftsman,  the 
"  tradition  of  the  service." 

It  would  be  foolish  to  suggest  that  any  considerable 
body  of  men  are  uninfluenced  by  economic  considera- 
tions. But  to  represent  them  as  amenable  to  such  in- 
centives only  is  to  give  a  quite  unreal  and  bookish  pic- 
ture of  the  actual  conditions  under  which  the  work  of 
the  world  is  carried  on.  How  large  a  part  such  con- 
siderations play  varies  from  one  occupation  to  another, 
according  to  the  character  of  the  work  which  it  does 
and  the  manner  in  which  it  is  organized.  In  what  is 
called  par  excellence  industry,  calculations  of  pecuniary 
gain  and  loss  are  more  powerful  than  in  most  of  the  so- 
called  professions,  though  even  in  industry  they  are 
more  constantly  present  to  the  minds  of  the  business 
men  who  "  direct  "  it,  than  to  those  of  the  managers  and 
technicians,  most  of  whom  are  paid  fixed  salaries,  or  to 
the  rank  and  file  of  wage-workers.  In  the  professions 
of  teaching  and  medicine,  in  many  branches  of  the  pub- 


158  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

lie  service,  the  necessary  qualities  arc  secured,  without 
the  intervention  of  the  capitalist  cmjiloyer,  partly  by 
pecuniary  incentives,  partly  by  training  and  education, 
partly  by  the  acceptance  on  the  part  of  those  entering 
them  of  the  traditional  obligations  of  their  profession 
as  part  of  the  normal  framework  of  th(Mr  working  lives. 
But  this  difference  is  not  constant  and  unalterable. 
It  springs  from  the  manner  in  which  different  types  of 
occupation  are  organized,  on  the  training  which  they 
offer,  and  the  morale  which  they  cultivate  among  their 
members.  The  psychology  of  a  vocation  can  in  fact  be 
changed  ;  new  motives  can  be  elicited,  provided  steps  are 
taken  to  allow  them  free  expression.  It  is  as  feasible 
to  turn  building  into  an  organized  profession,  with  a 
relatively  high  code  of  public  honor,  as  it  was  to  do 
the  same  for  medicine  or  teaching. 

The  truth  is  that  we  ought  radically  to  revise  the 
presuppositions  as  to  human  motives  on  which  current 
presentations  of  economic  theory  are  ordinarily  founded 
and  in  terms  of  which  the  discussion  of  economic  ques- 
tion is  usually  carried  on.  The  assumption  that  the 
stimulus  of  imminent  personal  want  is  eitlier  the  only 
spur,  or  a  sufficient  spur,  to  productive  effort  is  a  relic 
of  a  crude  psychology  which  has  little  warrant  either 
in  past  history  or  in  present  experience.  It  derives 
what  plausibility  it  possesses  from  a  confusion  between 
wf)rk  in  the  sense  of  the  lowest  (junnhim  oi  activity 
needed  to  escape  actual  stan'ation,  and  the  work  which 
is  given,  irrespective  of  the  fact  that  elementary  wants 
may  already  have  been  satisfied,  through  the  natural  dis- 
position of  ordinary  men  to  maintain,  and  of  extraordi- 


THE  CONDITION  OF  EFFICIENCY         159 

nary  men  to  improve  upon,  the  level  of  exertion  ac- 
cepted as  reasonable  bj  the  public  opinion  of  the  group 
of  which  they  are  members.  It  is  the  old  difference, 
forgotten  by  society  as  often  as  it  is  learned,  between 
the  labor  of  the  free  man  and  that  of  the  slave.  Eco- 
nomic fear  may  secure  the  minimum  effort  needed  to 
escape  economic  penalties.  What,  however,  has  made 
progress  possible  in  the  past,  and  what,  it  may  be  sug- 
gested, matters  to  the  world  to-day,  is  not  the  bare 
minimum  which  is  required  to  avoid  actual  want,  but 
the  capacity  of  men  to  bring  to  bear  upon  their  tasks  a 
degree  of  energy,  which,  while  it  can  be  stimulated  by 
economic  incentives,  yields  results  far  in  excess  of  any 
which  are  necessary  merely  to  avoid  the  extremes  of 
hunger  or  destitution. 

That  capacity  is  a  matter  of  training,  tradition  and 
habit,  at  least  as  much  as  of  pecuniary  stimulus,  and  the 
ability  of  a  professional  association  representing  the 
public  opinion  of  a  group  of  workers  to  raise  it  is, 
therefore,  considerable.  Once  industry  has  been  lib- 
erated from  its  subservience  to  the  interests  of  the  func- 
tionless  property-owner,  it  is  in  this  sphere  that  trade 
unions  may  be  expected  increasingly  to  find  their  func- 
tion. Its  importance  both  for  the  general  interests  of 
the  community  and  for  the  special  interests  of  particular 
groups  of  workers  can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  Techni- 
cal knowledge  and  managerial  skill  are  likely  to  be  avail- 
able as  readily  for  a  committee  appointed  by  the  workers 
in  an  industry  as  for  a  committee  appointed,  as  now, 
by  the  shareholders.  But  it  is  more  and  more  evident 
to-day  that  the  crux  of  the  economic  situation  is  not 


160  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

the  technical  deficiencies  of  industrial  organization,  but 
the  growing  inability  of  those  who  direct  industry  to 
command  the  active  good  will  of  the  personnel.  Their 
co-operation  is  promised  by  the  conversion  of  industry 
into  a  profession  serving  the  public,  and  promised,  as 
far  as  can  be  judged,  by  that  alone. 

Xor  is  the  assumption  of  the  new  and  often  disagree- 
able obligations  of  internal  discipline  and  public  re- 
sponsibility one  which  trade  unionism  can  afford,  once 
the  change  is  accomplished,  to  shirk,  however  alien  they 
may  be  to  its  present  traditions.  For  ultimately,  if  by 
slow  degrees,  power  follows  the  ability  to  wield  it; 
authority  goes  with  function.  The  workers  cannot  have 
it  both  ways.  They  must  choose  whether  to  assume  the 
responsibility  for  industrial  discipline  and  become  free, 
or  to  repudiate  it  and  continue  to  be  serfs.  If,  organ- 
ized as  professional  bodies,  they  can  provide  a  more 
effective  service  than  that  which  is  now,  with  increas- 
ing difficulty,  extorted  by  the  agents  of  capital,  they 
will  have  made  good  their  hold  upon  the  future.  If 
they  cannot,  they  will  remain  among  the  less  calculable 
instruments  of  production  which  many  of  them  are  to- 
day. The  instinct  of  mankind  warns  it  against  accept- 
ing at  their  face  value  spiritual  demands  which  cannot 
justify  themselves  by  practical  achievements.  And  the 
road  along  which  the  organized  workers,  like  any  other 
class,  must  climb  to  power,  starts  from  the  provision  of 
a  more  effective  economic  service  than  their  masters,  as 
their  grip  uj)on  industry  becomes  increasingly  vacillat- 
ing and  uncertain,  are  able  to  supply. 


THE  POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER 

The  conversion  of  industry  into  a  profession  will  in- 
volve at  least  as  great  a  change  in  the  position  of  the 
management  as  in  that  of  the  manual  workers.  As 
each  industry  is  organized  for  the  performance  of  func 
tion,  the  employer  will  cease  to  be  a  profit  maker  and 
become  what,  in  so  far  as  he  holds  his  position  by  a 
reputable  title,  he  already  is,  one  workman  among 
others.  In  some  industries,  where  the  manager  is  a 
capitalist  as  well,  the  alteration  may  take  place  through 
such  a  limitation  of  his  interest  as  a  capitalist  as  it  has 
been  proposed  by  employers  and  workers  to  introduce 
into  the  building  industry.  In  others,  where  the  whole 
work  of  administration  rests  on  the  shoulders  of  salaried 
managers,  it  has  already  in  part  been  carried  out.  The 
economic  conditions  of  this  change  have,  indeed,  been 
prepared  by  the  separation  of  ownership  from  manage- 
ment, and  by  the  growth  of  an  intellectual  proletariat 
to  whom  the  scientific  and  managerial  work  of  industry 
is  increasingly  intrusted.  The  concentration  of  busi- 
nesses, the  elaboration  of  organization,  and  the  develop- 
ments springing  from  the  application  of  science  to  in- 
dustry have  resulted  in  the  multiplication  of  a  body  of 
industrial  brain  workers  who  make  the  old  classi- 
fications into  "  employers  and  workmen,"  which  is 
still  current  in  common  speech,  an  absurdly  mislead- 

161 


162  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

wfj^  description  of  the   industrial   system   as   it  exists 
to-day. 

To  complete  the  transformation  all  that  is  needed  is 
that  this  new  class  of  officials,  who  fifty  years  ago  were 
almost  unknown,  should  recognize  that  they,  like  the 
manual  workers,  arc  the  victims  of  the  domination  of 
property,  and  that  both  professional  pride  and  economic 
interest  require  that  they  should  throw  in  their  lot  with 
the  rest  of  those  who  are  engaged  in  constructive  work. 
Their  position  to-day  is  often,  indeed,  very  far  from 
being  a  happy  one.  Many  of  them,  like  some  mine 
managers,  are  miserably  paid,  Tlioir  tenure  of  their 
posts  is  sometimes  highly  insecure.  Their  opportuni- 
ties for  promotion  may  be  few,  and  distributed  with  a 
singular  capriciousness.  They  see  the  prizes  of  indus- 
try :nv;irded  by  favoritism,  or  by  the  nepotism  which 
results  in  the  head  of  a  business  unloading  upon  it  a 
family  of  sons  whom  it  would  be  economical  to  pay  to 
keep  out  of  it,  and  wliieh,  indignantly  denounced  on  the 
rare  occasions  on  which  it  occurs  in  the  public  service,  is 
so  much  the  rule  in  private  industry  that  no  one  even 
questions  its  propriety.  During  the  war  they  have 
found  that,  while  the  organized  workers  have  secured 
advanc(  s,  their  own  salaries  hav(>  often  remained  almost 
stationary,  beeause  they  have  been  too  genteel  to  take 
part  in  trade  unionism,  and  that  to-day  they  are  some- 
times paid  less  than  the  men  for  whose  work  they  are 
supposed  to  be  responsible.  Regarded  by  the  workmen 
as  the  hangers-on  of  the  masters,  and  by  their  employers 
as  one  section  among  the  rest  of  the  "  hands,"  they  have 
the  odium  of  capitalism  without  its  power  or  its  profits. 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER       1G3 

From  the  conversion  of  industry  into  a  profession 
those  who  at  present  do  its  intellectual  work  have  as 
much  to  gain  as  the  manual  workers.  For  the  principle 
of  function,  for  which  we  have  pleaded  as  the  basis  of 
industrial  organization,  supplies  the  only  intelligible 
standard  by  which  the  powers  and  duties  of  the  different 
groups  engaged  in  industry  can  be  determined.  At  the 
present  time  no  such  standard  exists.  The  social  order 
of  the  pre-industrial  era,  of  which  faint  traces  have  sur- 
vived in  the  forms  of  academic  organization,  was 
marked  by  a  careful  grading  of  the  successive  stages  in 
the  progress  from  apprentice  to  master,  each  of  which 
was  distinguished  by  clearly  defined  rights  and  duties, 
varying  from  grade  to  grade  and  together  forming  a 
hierarchy  of  functions.  The  industrial  system  which 
developed  in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century  did 
not  admit  any  principle  of  organization  other  than  the 
convenience  of  the  individual,  who  by  enterprise,  skill, 
good  fortune,  unscrupulous  energy  or  mere  nepotism, 
happened  at  any  moment  to  be  in  a  position  to  wield 
economic  authority.  His  powers  were  what  he  could 
exercise;  his  rights  were  what  at  any  time  he  could 
assert.  The  Lancashire  mill-owner  of  the  fifties  was, 
like  the  Cyclops,  a  law  unto  himself.  Hence,  since  sub- 
ordination and  discipline  are  indispensable  in  any 
complex  undertaking,  the  subordination  which  emerged 
in  industry  was  that  of  servant  to  master,  and  the  dis- 
cipline such  as  economic  strength  could  impose  upon 
economic  weakness. 

The  alternative  to  the  allocation  of  power  by  the 
struggle  of  individuals  for  self-aggrandizement   is  its 


164  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

allocation  according  to  function,  that  each  group  in  the 
complex  process  of  production  should  wield  so  much 
authority  as,  and  no  more  authority  than,  is  needed  to 
enable  it  to  perform  the  special  duties  for  which  it  is 
responsible.  An  organization  of  industry  based  on  this 
principle  does  not  imply  the  merging  of  specialized  eco- 
nomic functions  in  an  undifferentiated  industrial  democ- 
racy, or  the  obliteration  of  the  brain  workers  beneath  the 
sheer  mass  of  artisans  and  laborers.  But  it  is  incom- 
patible with  the  unlimited  exercise  of  economic  power 
by  any  class  or  individual.  It  would  have  as  its  funda- 
mental rule  that  the  only  powers  which  a  man  can  exer- 
cise are  those  conferred  upon  him  in  virtue  of  his  office. 
There  would  be  subordination.  But  it  would  be  pro- 
foundly different  from  that  which  exists  to-day.  For 
it  would  not  be  the  subordination  of  one  man  to  an- 
other, but  of  all  men  to  the  pur})ose  for  whicli  industry 
is  carried  on.  There  would  be  authority,  l^ut  it  would 
not  be  the  authority  of  the  individual  who  imposes 
rules  in  virtue  of  his  economic  power  for  the  attainment 
of  his  economic  advantage.  It  would  be  the  authority 
springing  from  the  necessity  of  combining  diifcrcnt 
duties  to  attain  a  connnon  end.  'Jlicre  would  be  dis- 
cipline. But  it  would  be  the  discipline  involved  in 
pursuing  that  end,  not  the  discipline  enforced  upon  one 
man  for  the  convenience  or  profit  of  another.  Under 
such  an  organization  of  industry  the  brain  worker 
might  expect,  as  never  beffjrc,  to  come  to  iiis  own.  lie 
would  be  estimated  and  promoted  by  his  capacity,  not 
by  his  means.  He  would  be  less  likely  than  at  present 
to  find   doors  closed   to  him   because  of  poverty.      His 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER       165 

judges  would  be  his  colleagues,  not  an  owner  of  prop- 
erty intent  on  dividends.  He  would  not  suffer  from  the 
perversion  of  values  which  rates  the  talent  and  energy 
by  which  wealth  is  created  lower  than  the  possession  of 
property,  which  is  at  best  their  pensioner  and  at  worst 
the  spend-thrift  of  what  intelligence  has  produced.  In 
a  society  organized  for  the  encouragement  of  creative 
activity  those  who  arc  esteemed  most  highly  will  be 
those  who  create,  as  in  a  world  organized  for  enjoyment 
they  are  those  who  own. 

Such  considerations  are  too  general  and  abstract  to 
carry  conviction.  Greater  concreteness  may  be  given 
them  by  comparing  the  present  position  of  mine-man- 
agers with  that  which  they  would  occupy  were  effect 
given  to  Mr.  Justice  Sankey's  scheme  for  the  nationali- 
zation of  the  Coal  Industry.  A  body  of  technicians  who 
are  weighing  the  probable  effects  of  such  a  reorganiza- 
tion will  naturally  consider  them  in  relation  both  to 
their  own  professional  prospects  and  to  the  efficiency  of 
the  service  of  which  they  are  the  working  heads.  They 
will  properly  take  into  account  questions  of  salaries, 
pensions,  security  of  status  and  promotion.  At  the  same 
time  they  will  wish  to  be  satisfied  as  to  points  which, 
though  not  less  important,  are  less  easily  defined. 
Under  which  system,  private  or  public  ownership,  will 
they  have  most  personal  discretion  or  authority  over  the 
conduct  of  matters  within  their  professional  compe- 
tence ?  Under  which  will  they  have  the  best  guarantees 
that  their  special  knowledge  will  carry  due  w^eight,  and 
that,  when  handling  matters  of  art,  they  will  not  be 
overridden  or  obstructed  by  amateurs  ? 


166  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

As  far  as  the  specific  case  of  the  Coal  Industry  is  con- 
cerned the  question  of  security  and  salaries  need  liardly 
be  discussed.  The  gi'eatest  admirer  of  the  present  sys- 
tem would  not  argue  that  security  of  status  is  among 
the  advantages  which  it  offers  to  its  employees.  It  is 
notorious  that  in  some  districts,  at  least,  managers  are 
liable  to  be  dismissed,  however  professionally  competent 
they  may  be,  if  they  express  in  public  views  which  are 
not  approved  by  the  directors  of  their  company.  In- 
deed, the  criticism  which  is  normally  made  on  the 
public  services,  and  made  not  wholly  without  reason,  is 
that  the  security  which  they  offer  is  excessive.  On  the 
question  of  salaries  rather  more  than  one-half  of  the 
colliery  companies  of  Great  Britain  themselves  supplied 
figures  to  the  Coal  Industry  Commission.^  If  their 
returns  may  be  trusted,  it  would  appear  that  mine-man- 
agers are  paid,  as  a  class,  salaries  the  parsimony  of 
which  is  the  more  surprising  in  view  of  the  emphasis 
laid,  and  quite  properly  laid,  by  the  mine-owners  on 
the  managers'  responsibilities.  The  service  of  the  State 
does  not  normally  offer,  and  ought  not  to  offer,  financial 
prizes  comparable  with  those  of  private  industry.  But 
it  is  improbable,  had  the  mines  been  its  property  during 

1  The  Coal  Mines  Departmenct  supplied  the  following  figures 
to  the  Coal  Industry  CommiHsion  (Vol  III,  App.  66).  They 
relate  to  57  per  cent   of  the  colleriea  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

Salary,  including  bonus  and  Number  of  Managers 

value  of  house  and  coal  1013  1919 

£100  or  less     4  2 

£101  to  £200  134  3 

£201  to  £300  280  29 

£301  to  £400  161  251 

£401  to  £500  321  213 

£501  to  £600  57  146 

£601  and  over  50  152 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKEI?       167 

the  last  ten  years,  that  more  than  one-half  the  managers 
would  have  heen  in  receipt  of  salaries  of  under  £301 
per  year,  and  of  less  than  £500  in  1919,  by  which  time 
prices  had  more  than  doubled,  and  the  aggregate  profits 
of  the  mine-owners  (of  which  the  greater  part  was,  how- 
ever, taken  by  the  State  in  taxation)  had  amounted  in 
five  years  to  £160,000,000.  It  would  be  misleading  to 
suggest  that  the  salaries  paid  to  mine-managers  are 
typical  of  private  industry,  nor  need  it  be  denied  that 
the  probable  effect  of  turning  an  industry  into  a  public 
service  would  be  to  reduce  the  size  of  the  largest  prizes 
at  present  offered.  What  is  to  be  expected  is  that  the 
lower  and  medium  salaries  would  be  raised,  and  the 
largest  somewhat  diminished.  It  is  hardly  to  be  denied, 
at  any  rate,  that  the  majority  of  brain  workers  in  in- 
dustry have  nothing  to  fear  on  financial  grounds  from 
such  a  change  as  is  proposed  by  Mr.  Justice  Sankey. 
Under  the  normal  organization  of  industry,  profits,  it 
cannot  be  too  often  insisted,  do  not  go  to  them  but  to 
shareholders.  There  does  not  appear  to  be  any  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  salaries  of  managers  in  the  mines 
making  more  than  5/-  profit  a  ton  were  any  larger  than 
those  making  under  3/-. 

The  financial  aspect  of  the  change  is  not,  however, 
the  only  point  which  a  group  of  managers  or  technicians 
have  to  consider.  They  have  also  to  weigh  its  effect  on 
their  professional  status.  Will  they  have  as  much  free- 
dom, initiative  and  authority  in  the  service  of  the  com- 
munity as  under  private  ownership  ?  How  that  ques- 
tion is  answered  depends  upon  the  form  given  to  the 
administrative  system  through  which  a  public  service  is 


1G8  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

conducted.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  an  arrangement 
under  which  the  life  of  a  mine-manager  would  be  made 
a  burden  to  him  by  perpetual  recalcitrance  on  the  part 
of  the  men  at  the  pit  for  which  he  is  responsible.  It  i< 
possible  to  conceive  one  under  which  he  would  be  ham- 
pered to  the  point  of  paralysis  by  irritating  interference 
from  a  bureaucracy  at  headquarters.  In  the  past  some 
managers  of  "  co-operative  workshops "  suffered,  it 
would  seem,  from  the  former:  many  officers  of  Employ- 
ment Exchanges  are  the  victims,  unless  common  rumor 
is  misleading,  of  the  latter.  It  is  quite  legitimate,  in- 
deed it  is  indispensable,  that  these  dangers  should  be 
emphasized.  The  problem  of  reorganizing  industry  is, 
as  has  been  said  above,  a  problem  of  constitution  mak- 
ing. It  is  likely  to  be  handled  successfully  only  if  the 
defects  to  which  different  types  of  constitutional  ma- 
chinery are  likely  to  be  liable  are  pointed  out  in  advance. 
Once,  however,  these  dangers  are  realized,  to  devise 
precautions  against  them  appears  to  be  a  comparatively 
simple  matter.  If  Mr.  Justice  Sankey's  proposals  ho 
taken  as  a  concrete  example  of  the  position  which  would 
be  occupied  by  the  managers  in  a  nationalized  industry, 
it  will  be  seen  that  they  do  not  involve  either  of  the  two 
dangers  which  are  pointed  out  above.  The  manager 
will,  it  is  true,  work  with  a  Local  Mining  Council  or  ]nt 
committee,  which  is  to  *'  meet  fortnightly,  or  oftencr  if 
need  be,  to  advise  the  manager  on  all  questions  concern- 
ing the  direction  and  safety  of  the  mine,"  and  "  if  the 
manager  refuses  to  take  the  advice  of  the  Local  Mining 
Council  on  any  question  concerning  the  safety  and 
health  of  the  mine,  such  (piestion   shall  be  referred   to 


POSITIOI^  OF  THE  BKAIN  WORKER        169 

the  District  Mining  Council."  It  is  true  also  that,  once 
such  a  Local  Mining  Council  is  formally  established, 
the  manager  will  find  it  necessary  to  win  its  confidence, 
to  lead  by  persuasion,  not  by  mere  driving,  to  establish, 
in  short,  the  same  relationships  of  comradeship  and  good 
will  as  ought  to  exist  between  the  colleagues  in  any 
common  undertaking.  But  in  all  this  there  is  nothing 
to  undermine  his  authority,  unless  "  authority "  be 
understood  to  mean  an  arbitrary  power  which  no  man 
is  fit  to  exercise,  and  which  few  men,  in  their  sober 
moments,  would  claim.  The  manager  will  be  appointed 
by,  and  responsible  to,  not  the  men  whose  work  he  super- 
vises, but  the  District  Mining  Council,  which  controls 
all  the  pits  in  a  district,  and  on  that  council  he  will  be 
represented.  iSTor  will  he  be  at  the  mercy  of  a  distant 
"  clerkocracy,"  overwhelming  him  with  circulars  and 
overriding  his  expert  knowledge  with  impracticable 
mandates  devised  in  London.  The  very  kernel  of  the 
schemes  advanced  both  by  Justice  Sankey  and  by  the 
Miners'  Federation  is  decentralized  administration 
within  the  framework  of  a  national  system.  There  is  no 
question  of  "  managing  the  industry  from  Whitehall." 
The  characteristics  of  different  coal-fields  vary  so  widely 
that  reliance  on  local  knowledge  and  experience  are 
essential,  and  it  is  to  local  knowledge  and  experience 
that  it  is  proposed  to  intrust  the  administration  of  the 
industry.  The  constitution  which  is  recommended  is,  in 
short,  not  "  Unitary  "  but  "  Federal."  There  will  be  a 
division  of  functions  and  power  between  central  authori- 
ties and  district  authorities.  The  former  will  lay  down 
general  rules  as  to  those  matters  which  must  necessarily 


no  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

be  dealt  with  on  a  national  basis,  Tbe  latter  will  ad- 
minister the  industry  within  their  own  districts,  and,  as 
loDiT  as  they  comply  with  those  rules  and  provide  their 
quota  of  coal,  will  possess  local  autonomy  and  will 
follow  the  method  of  working  the  pits  which  they  think 
best  suited  to  local  conditions. 

Thus  interpreted,  public  ownership  does  not  apyicar  to 
confront  the  brain  worker  with  the  danger  of  unintelli- 
gent interference  with  his  special  technique,  of  which  he 
is,  quite  naturally,  apprehensive.  It  offers  him,  indeed, 
far  larger  opportunities  of  professional  development  than 
are  open  to  all  but  a  favored  few  to-day,  when  the  con- 
siderations of  productive  efficiency,  which  it  is  his  spe- 
cial metier  to  promote,  are  liable  to  be  overridden  by 
short-sighted  financial  interests  operating  through  the 
pressure  of  a  Board  of  Directors  who  desire  to  show  an 
immediate  profit  to  their  shareholders,  and  who,  to 
obtain  it,  will  "cream"  the  pit,  or  work  it  in  a  way 
other  than  considerations  of  technical  efficiency  would 
dictate.  And  the  interest  of  the  community  in  secur- 
ing that  the  manager's  professional  skill  is  liberated  for 
the  service  of  the  public,  is  as  great  as  his  own.  For 
the  economic  developments  of  the  last  thirty  years  hare 
made  the  managerial  and  technical  personnel  of  indus- 
try the  repositories  of  public  responsibilities  of  quite  in- 
calculable importance,  which,  with  the  best  will  in  the 
world,  they  can  hardly  at  present  discharge.  The  most 
salient  characteristic  of  modern  industrial  organization 
is  that  production  is  carried  on  under  the  general  di- 
rection of  business  men,  who  do  not  themselves  neces- 
sarily know  anything  of  productive  j^rocesses.    ."  Busi- 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER        171 

ness  "  and  ''  industry  "  tend  to  an  increasing  extent  to 
form  two  compartments,  which,  though  united  within 
the  same  economic  system,  employ  different  types  of 
personnel,  evoke  different  qualities  and  recognize  differ- 
ent standards  of  efficiency  and  workmanship.  The  tech- 
nical and  managerial  staff  of  industry  is,  of  course, 
as  amenable  as  other  men  to  economic  incentives.  But 
their  special  work  is  production,  not  finance ;  and,  pro- 
vided they  are  not  smarting  under  a  sense  of  economic 
injustice,  they  want,  like  most  workmen,  to  "  see  the  job 
done  properly.''  The  business  men  who  ultimately  con- 
trol industry  are  concerned  with  the  promotion  and 
capitalization  of  companies,  with  competitive  selling 
and  the  advertisement  of  wares,  the  control  of  markets, 
the  securing  of  special  advantages,  and  the  arrangement 
of  pools,  combines  and  monopolies.  They  are  pre- 
occupied, in  fact,  with  financial  results,  and  are  inter- 
ested in  the  actual  making  of  goods  only  in  so  far  as 
financial  results  accrue  from  it. 

The  change  in  organization  which  has,  to  a  consider- 
able degree,  specialized  the  spheres  of  business  and  man- 
agement is  comparable  in  its  importance  to  that  which 
separated  business  and  labor  a  century  and  a  half 
ago.  It  is  specially  momentous  for  the  consumer. 
As  long  as  the  functions  of  manager,  technician  and 
capitalist  were  combined,  as  in  the  classical  era  of  the 
factory  system,  in  the  single  person  of  "  the  employer," 
it  was  not  unreasonable  to  assume  that  profits  and  pro- 
ductive efficiency  ran  similarly  together.  In  such  cir- 
cumstances the  ingenuity  with  which  economists  proved 


172  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

that,  in  obcclioiice  to  "  the  law  (tf  snbstitntiou.''  he  would 
oboose  tbe  most  eeonoiiiical  process,  inacbino,  or  typo  of 
organization,  wore  a  certain  plausibility.  True,  the  em- 
ployer might,  even  so,  adulterate  his  goods  or  exploit  the 
labor  of  a  helpless  class  of  workers.  But  as  long  as  the 
person  directing  industry  was  himself  primarily  a  man- 
ager, he  could  hardly  have  the  training,  ability  or  time, 
even  if  he  had  the  inclination,  to  concentrate  special  at- 
tention on  financial  gains  unconnected  with,  or  opposed 
to,  progress  in  the  arts  of  production,  and  there  was 
some  justification  for  the  conventional  picture  which 
represented  "  the  manufacturer  "  as  the  guardian  of  the 
interests  of  the  consumer.  With  the  drawing  apart  of 
the  financial  and  technical  departments  of  industry — 
with  the  separation  of  "  business  "  from  "  production  " 
— the  link  which  bound  profits  to  productive  efficiency 
is  tending  to  Ix^  snapped.  There  are  more  ways  than 
formerly  of  securing  the  former  without  achieving  the 
latter;  and  when  it  is  pleaded  that  the  interests  of  the 
captain  of  industry  stimulate  the  adoption  of  the  most 
"  economical  "  methods  and  thus  secure  industrial  prog- 
ress, it  is  necessary  to  ask  "economical  for  whom"? 
Though  the  organization  of  industry  which  is  most  ef- 
ficient, in  the  sense  of  offering  the  consumer  the  best 
service  at  the  lowest  real  cost,  may  be  that  which  is  most 
profitable  to  the  firm,  it  is  also  true  that  profits  are 
constantly  made  in  ways  which  have  nothing  to  do  with 
efficient  production,  and  which  sometimes,  indeed,  im- 
pede it. 

The  manner  in  which  "  business  "  may  find  that  the 
methods  which  pay  itself  best  are  those  which  a  truly 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER       173 

scientific  "  management  "  would  condemn  may  be  illus- 
trated by  three  examples.  In  the  first  place,  the  whole 
mass  of  profits  which  are  obtained  by  the  adroit  capi- 
talization of  a  new  business,  or  the  reconstruction  of  one 
which  already  exists,  have  hardly  any  connection  with 
production  at  all.  When,  for  instance,  a  Lancashire 
cotton  mill  capitalized  at  £100,000  is  bought  by  a 
London  syndicate  which  re-floats  it  with  a  capital  of 
£500,000 — not  at  all  an  extravagant  ease — what  exactly 
has  happened  ?  In  many  cases  the  equipment  of  the 
mill  for  production  remains,  after  the  process,  what  it 
was  before  it.  It  is,  however,  valued  at  a  different 
figure,  because  it  is  anticipated  that  the  product  of  the 
mill  will  sell  at  a  price  which  will  pay  a  reasonable 
profit  not  only  upon  the  lower,  but  upon  the  higher, 
capitalization.  If  the  apparent  state  of  the  market  and 
prospects  of  the  industry  are  such  that  the  public  can  be 
induced  to  believe  this,  the  promoters  of  the  reconstruc- 
tion find  it  worth  while  to  recapitalize  the  mill  on  the 
new  basis.  They  make  their  profit  not  as  manufac- 
turers, but  as  financiers.  They  do  not  in  any  way  add 
to  the  productive  efficiency  of  the  firm,  but  they  acquire 
shares  which  will  entitle  them  to  an  increased  return. 
JsTormally,  if  the  market  is  favorable,  they  part  with  the 
greater  number  of  them  as  soon  as  they  are  acquired. 
But,  whether  they  do  so  or  not,  what  has  occurred  is  a 
process  by  which  the  business  element  in  industry  ob- 
tains the  right  to  a  larger  share  of  the  product,  without 
in  any  way  increasing  the  efficiency  of  the  service  which 
is  offered  to  the  consumer. 

Other  examples  of  the  manner  in  which  the  control  of 


174  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

production  bv  "  business  "  cuts  across  the  line  of  cco- 
noini<'  pro2;ress  are  the  wastes  of  competitive  industry 
and  the  j)rofitp  of  monopoly.  It  is  well  known  that  the 
price  paid  by  the  consumer  includes  marketing  costs, 
which  to  a  varying:,  but  to  a  large,  extent  are  expenses 
not  of  supplying  the  goods,  but  of  supplying  them  under 
conditions  involving  the  expenses  of  advertisement  and 
competitive  distribution.  For  the  individual  firm  such 
expenses,  which  enable  it  to  absorb  part  of  a  rival's 
trade,  may  be  an  economy:  to  the  consumer  of  milk  or 
coal — to  take  two  flagrant  instances — they  are  pure 
loss.  Xor,  as  is  sometimes  assumed,  are  such  wastes 
confined  to  distribution.  Technical  reasons  are  stated 
by  railway  managers  to  make  desirable  a  unification  of 
railway  administration  and  by  mining  experts  of  mines. 
But,  up  to  the  "war,  business  considerations  maintained 
the  expensive  system  under  which  each  railway  company 
was  operated  as  a  separate  system,  and  still  prevent  col- 
lieries, even  collieries  in  the  same  district,  from  being 
administered  as  parts  of  a  single  organization.  Pits  are 
drowned  out  by  water,  because  companies  cannot  agree 
to  apportion  between  them  the  costs  of  a  common  drain- 
age system;  materials  are  bought,  and  products  sold, 
separately,  because  collieries  will  not  combine;  small 
coal  is  left  in  to  the  amount  of  millions  of  tons  because 
the  most  economical  and  technically  efficient  working  of 
the  seams  is  not  necessarily  that  which  yields  the  largest 
profit  to  the  business  men  who  control  production.  In 
this  instance  the  wide  differences  in  economic  strength 
which  exist  between  different  mines  discourage  the  uni- 
fication whieh   is  eeonomieallv  desirable;  naturallv  the 


POSITION  OF  THE  BEAIX  WOEKER       175 

directors  of  a  company  which  owns  "  a  good  thing  "  do 
not  desire  to  merge  interests  with  a  company  working 
coal  that  is  poor  in  quality  or  expensive  to  mine.  When, 
as  increasingly  happens  in  other  industries,  competi- 
tive wastes,  or  some  of  them,  are  eliminated  by  com- 
bination, there  is  a  genuine  advance  in  technical  ef- 
ficiency, which  must  be  set  to  the  credit  of  business 
motives.  In  that  event,  however,  the  divergence  be- 
tween business  interests  and  those  of  the  consumers  is 
merely  pushed  one  stage  further  forward;  it  arises,  of 
course,  over  the  question  of  prices.  If  any  one  is  dis- 
posed to  think  that  this  picture  of  the  economic  waste 
which  accompanies  the  domination  of  production  by 
business  interests  is  overdrawn,  he  may  be  invited  to 
consider  the  criticisms  upon  the  system  passed  by  the 
"  efficiency  engineers,"  who  are  increasingly  being 
called  upon  to  advise  as  to  industrial  organization  and 
equipment.  "  The  higher  officers  of  the  corporation,'" 
writes  Mr.  H.  L.  Gantt  of  a  Public  Utility  Company 
established  in  America  during  the  war,  "  have  all  with- 
out exception  been  men  of  the  '  business  '  type  of  mind, 
who  have  made  their  success  through  financiering,  buy- 
ing, selling,  etc.  .  .  .  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  well 
known  that  our  industrial  system  has  not  measured  up 
as  we  had  expected.  .  .  .  The  reason  for  its  falling 
short  is  undoubtedly  that  the  men  directing  it  had  been 
trained  in  a  business  system  operated  for  profits,  and 
did  not  understand  one  operated  solely  for  production. 
This  is  no  criticism  of  the  men  as  individuals;  they 
simply  did  not  know  the  job,  and,  what  is  worse,  they 
did  not  know  that  they  did  not  know  it." 


176  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

In  so  far,  then,  as  "  Business  "  and  "  Manac^oment " 
are  separated,  the  latter  being  employed  under  tlir  di- 
rcetion  of  the  former,  it  eannot  be  assumed  that  the 
direction  of  industry  is  in  the  hands  of  persons  whose 
primary  concern  is  productive  efficiency.  That  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  efficiency  will  result  incidentally 
from  the  pursuit  of  business  profits  is  not,  of  course, 
denied.  What  seems  to  be  true,  however,  is  that  the 
main  interest  of  those  directing  an  industry  which  has 
reached  this  stage  of  development  is  given  to  financial 
strategy  and  the  control  of  markets,  because  the  gains 
which  these  activities  offer  are  normally  so  much  larger 
than  those  accruing  from  the  mere  improvement  of  the 
processes  of  production.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  it 
is  precisely  that  improvement  which  is  the  main  inter- 
est of  the  consumer.  lie  may  tolerate  large  profits  as 
long  as  they  are  thought  to  be  the  symbol  of  efficient 
I)ro(luction.  But  what  he  is  concerned  with  is  the  supply 
of  goods,  not  the  value  of  shares,  and  when  profits  ap- 
j)e;ir  to  be  made,  not  by  efficient  production,  but  by 
skilful  financiering  or  shrewd  commercial  tactics,  they 
no  longer  appear  meritorious.  If,  in  disgust  at  what 
he  has  learned  to  call  ^'  profiteering,"  the  consumer  seeks 
an  alternative  to  a  system  under  which  product  is  con- 
trolled by  "  Business,"  he  can  hardly  find  it  except  by 
making  an  ally  of  the  managerial  and  technical  per- 
sonnel of  industry.  They  organize  the  sen'ice  which  he 
requires;  they  arc  relatively  little  implicated,  either  by 
material  interest  or  by  psychological  bias,  in  the  finan- 
cial methods  which  he  distrusts;  they  often  find  the  con- 
trol of  their  professions  by  business  men  who  are  jiri- 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER        177 

marily  financiers  irritating  in  the  obstruction  which  it 
offers  to  technical  efficiency,  as  well  as  sharp  and  close- 
fisted  in  the  treatment  of  salaries.  Both  on  public  and 
professional  grounds  they  belong  to  a  group  which  ought 
to  take  the  initiative  in  promoting  a  partnership  between 
the  producers  and  the  public.  They  can  offer  the  com- 
munity the  scientific  knowledge  and  specialized  ability 
which  is  the  most  important  condition  of  progress  in  the 
arts  of  production.  It  can  offer  them  a  more  secure  and 
dignified  status,  larger  opportunities  for  the  exercise  of 
their  special  talents,  and  the  consciousness  that  they  are 
giving  the  best  of  their  work  and  their  lives,  not  to 
enriching  a  handful  of  uninspiring,  if  innocuous,  share- 
holders, but  to  the  service  of  the  great  body  of  their 
fellow-countrymen.  If  the  last  advantage  be  dismissed 
as  a  phrase — if  medical  officers  of  health,  directors  of 
education,  directors  of  the  co-operative  wholesale  be  as- 
sumed to  be  quite  uninfluenced  by  any  consciousness  of 
social  service — the  first  two,  at  any  rate,  remain.  And 
they  are  considerable. 

It  is  this  gradual  disengagement  of  managerial  tech- 
nique from  financial  interests  which  would  appear  the 
probable  line  along  which  "  the  employer  "  of  the  future 
will  develop.  The  substitution  throughout  industry  of 
fixed  salaries  for  fluctuating  profits  would,  in  itself,  de- 
prive his  position  of  half  the  humiliating  atmosphere  of 
predatory  enterprise  which  embarrasses  to-day  any  man 
of  honor  who  finds  himself,  when  he  has  been  paid  for 
his  services,  in  possession  of  a  surplus  for  which  there 
is  no  assignable  reason.  Nor,  once  large  incomes  from 
profits  have  been  extinguished,  need  his  salary  be  large, 


178  THE  ACQT'ISTTTVE  SOCIETY 

as  incomes  are  reckoned  to-day.  It  is  said  that  among 
the  barbarians,  where  wealth  is  still  measured  by  cattle, 
crcat  chiefs  are  described  as  hundred-cow  men.  The 
manager  of  a  great  enterprise  who  is  paid  $400,000  a 
year,  might  similarly  be  described  as  a  hundred-family 
man,  since  he  receives  the  income  of  a  hundred  families. 
It  is  true  that  special  talent  is  worth  any  price,  and 
that  a  payment  of  $400,000  a  year  to  the  head  of  a 
business  with  a  turnover  of  millions  is  economically  a 
bagatelle.  But  economic  considerations  are  not  ihe 
only  considerations.  There  is  also  *'  the  point  of 
honor."  And  the  truth  is  that  these  hundred-family 
salaries  are  ungentlemanly. 

When  really  important  issues  are  at  stake  every  one 
realizes  that  no  decent  man  can  stand  out  for  his  jiricc. 
A  general  does  not  haggle  with  his  government  for  the 
precise  pecuniary  equivalent  of  his  contribution  to  vic- 
tory. A  sentry  who  gives  the  alarm  to  a  sleeping  bat- 
talion does  not  spend  next  day  collecting  the  capital 
value  of  the  lives  he  has  saved  ;  he  is  paid  1/-  a  day  and 
is  lucky  if  he  gets  it.  The  commander  of  a  ship  does 
not  cram  himself  ami  liis  Ixlongings  into  the  boats  and 
leave  the  crew  to  scramble  out  of  the  wreck  as  l)est  they 
can  ;  by  the  tradition  of  the  sen-ice  he  is  the  last  man 
to  leave.  There  is  no  reason  why  the  public  should 
insult  man.ifacturers  and  men  of  business  by  treating 
them  as  though  they  were  more  thick-skinned  than  gen- 
erals and  more  extravagant  than  privates.  To  say  that 
they  are  worth  a  good  deal  more  than  even  the  exorbi- 
tant salaries  whicli  a  few  of  them  get  is  often  true. 
But  it  is  bfside  the  point.     No  one  has  any  business  to 


POSITION  OF  THE  BRAIN  WORKER       179 

expect  to  be  paid  "  what  he  is  worth,"  for  what  he 
is  worth  is  a  matter  between  his  own  soul  and  God. 
What  he  has  a  right  to  demand,  and  what  it  concerns  his 
fellow-men  to  see  that  he  gets,  is  enough  to  enable  him 
to  perform  his  work.  When  industry  is  organized  on  a 
basis  of  function,  that,  and  no  more  than  that,  is  what 
he  will  be  paid.  To  do  the  managers  of  industry  jus- 
tice, this  whining  for  more  money  is  a  vice  to  which 
they  (as  distinct  from  their  shareholders)  are  not  par- 
ticularly prone.  There  is  no  reason  why  they  should 
be.  If  a  man  has  important  work,  and  enough  leisure 
and  income  to  enable  him  to  do  it  properly,  he  is  in 
possession  of  as  much  happiness  as  is  good  for  any  of 
the  children  of  Adam. 


XI 

PORKO  UXUM  XECESSARIUM 

So  the  organization  of  society  on  the  basis  of  function, 
instead  of  on  that  of  rights,  implies  three  things.  It 
means,  first,  that  proprietary  rights  shall  be  maintained 
when  they  are  accompanied  by  the  performance  of  serv- 
ice and  alx»lished  when  they  are  not.  It  means,  second, 
that  the  producers  shall  stand  in  a  direct  relation  to  the 
community  for  whom  production  is  carried  on,  so  that 
their  responsibility  to  it  may  be  obvious  anc'  unmistak- 
able, not  lost,  as  at  present,  through  their  immediate 
subordination  to  shareholders  whose  interest  is  not  serv- 
ice but  gain.  It  means,  in  the  third  place,  that  the  obli- 
gation for  the  maintenance  of  the  service  shall  rest  upon 
the  professional  organization  of  those  who  perform  it, 
and  that,  subject  to  the  supervision  and  criticism  of 
the  consumer,  those  organizations  shall  exercise  so 
much  voice  in  the  government  of  industry  as  may  be 
needed  to  secure  that  the  obligation  is  discharged.  It 
is  obvious,  indeed,  that  no  change  of  system  or  ma- 
chinery can  avert  those  causes  of  social  malaise  which 
consist  in  the  egotism,  greed,  or  quarrelsomeness  of 
human  nature.  What  it  can  do  is  to  create  an  environ- 
ment in  which  those  are  not  the  qualities  which  are  en- 
couraged. It  cannot  secure  that  men  live  up  to  their 
principles.  What  it  can  do  is  to  establish  their  social 
order  upon  principles  to  which,  if  they  please,  they  can 

180 


I'OKRO  UNUM  NECESSARIUM  181 

live  up  and  not  live  down.  It  cannot  control  their 
actions.  It  can  offer  them  an  end  on  which  to  fix  their 
minds.  And,  as  their  minds  are,  so,  in  the  long  run 
and  with  exceptions,  their  practical  activity  will  be. 

The  first  condition  of  the  right  organization  of  indus- 
try is,  then,  the  intellectual  conversion  which,  in  their 
distrust  of  principles.  Englishmen  are  disposed  to  place 
last  or  to  omit  altogether.  It  is  that  emphasis  should 
be  transferred  from  the  opportunities  which  it  offers  in- 
dividuals to  the  social  functions  which  it  performs ;  that 
they  should  be  clear  as  to  its  end  and  should  judge  it 
by  reference  to  that  end,  not  by  incidental  consequences 
which  are  foreign  to  it,  however  brilliant  or  alluring 
those  consequences  may  be.  What  gives  its  meaning  to 
any  activity  which  is  not  purely  automatic  is  its  pur- 
pose. It  is  because  the  purpose  of  industry,  which  is 
the  conquest  of  nature  for  the  service  of  man,  is  neither 
adequately  expressed  in  its  organization  nor  present 
to  the  minds  of  those  engaged  in  it,  because  it  is  not 
regarded  as  a  function  but  as  an  opportunity  for  per- 
sonal gain  or  advancement  or  display,  that  the  economic 
life  of  modern  societies  is  in  a  perpetual  state  of  morbid 
irritation.  If  the  conditions  which  produce  that  un- 
natural tension  are  to  be  removed,  it  can  only  be 
effected  by  the  growth  of  a  habit  of  mind  which  will 
approach  questions  of  economic  organization  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  purpose  which  it  exists  to  serve,  and 
which  will  apply  to  it  something  of  the  spirit  expressed 
by  Bacon  when  he  said  that  the  work  of  man  ought  to 
be  carried  on  "  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  relief  of 
men's  estate." 


182  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

Viewed  from  that  angle  issues  which  are  insoluble 
when  treated  on  the  basis  of  rights  may  be  found  more 
susceptible  of  reasonable  treatment.  For  a  purpose,  is, 
in  the  first  place  a  principle  of  limitation.  It  deter- 
mines the  end  for  which,  and  therefore  the  limits  within 
which,  an  activity  is  to  be  carried  on.  It  divided  what 
is  worth  doing  from  what  is  not,  and  settles  the  scale 
upon  which  what  is  worth  doing  ought  to  be  done.  It 
is  in  the  second  place,  a  principle  of  unity,  because  it 
supplies  a  common  end  to  which  efforts  can  be  directed, 
and  submits  interests,  which  would  otherwise  conflict, 
to  the  judgment  of  an  over-ruling  object.  It  is,  in  the 
third  place,  a  principle  of  apportionment  or  distribu- 
tion. It  assigns  to  the  different  parties  of  groups  en- 
gaged in  a  common  undertaking  the  place  which  they 
are  to  occupy  in  carrying  it  out.  Thus  it  establishes 
order,  not  upon  cliance  or  power,  but  upon  a  principle, 
and  bases  remuneration  not  upon  what  men  can  with 
good  fortune  snatch  for  themselves  nor  upon  what,  if 
unlucky,  they  can  be  induced  to  accept,  but  upon  what 
is  appropriate  to  their  function,  no  more  and  no  less, 
so  that  those  who  perform  no  function  receive  no  pay- 
ment, and  those  who  contribute  to  the  common  end  re- 
ceive honourable  papnent  for  honourable  service. 

Frate,  la  nostra  volonta  quiota 

Virtu  di  carita,  che  fa  volerne 

Sol  quel  ch'avemo,  e  d'altro  non  ci  asseta. 

Si  disiasnimo  esse  piii  superne, 

Koran   rliscordi   11   nostri  disiri 

Dal  voler  di  colui  che  qui  ne  cerne. 


POERO  UNUM  NECESSARIUM  183 

Anzi  e  formale  ad  esto  beato  esse 
Tenersi  dentro  alia  divina  vogli, 
Per  ch'una  I'ansi  nostre  vogli  e  stesse. 

Chiaro  mi  fu  allor  com'  ogni  dove 

In  Cielo  e  paradiso,  e  si  la  grazia 

Del   sommo   ben   d'un   modo  non   vi   piove. 

The  famous  lines  in  which  Piccarda  explains  to  Dante 
the  order  of  Paradise  are  a  description  of  a  complex 
and  multiform  society  which  is  united  by  overmaster- 
ing devotion  to  a  common  end.  By  that  end  all  stations 
are  assigned  and  all  activities  are  valued.  The  parts 
derive  their  quality  from  their  place  in  the  system,  and 
are  so  permeated  by  the  unity  which  they  express  that 
they  themselves  are  glad  to  be  forgotten,  as  the  ribs  of 
an  arch  carry  the  eye  from  the  floor  from  which  they 
spring  to  the  vault  in  which  they  meet  and  interlace. 

Such  a  combination  of  unity  and  diversity  is  possible 
only  to  a  society  which  subordinates  its  activities  to 
the  principle  of  purpose.  For  what  that  principle  offers 
is  not  merely  a  standard  for  determining  the  relations 
of  different  classes  and  groups  of  producers,  but  a  scale 
of  moral  values.  Above  all,  it  assigns  to  economic  ac- 
tivity itself  its  proper  place  as  the  servant,  not  the 
master,  of  society.  The  burden  of  our  civilization  is 
not  merely,  as  many  suppose,  that  the  product  of  in- 
dustry is  ill-distributed,  or  its  conduct  tyrannical,  or 
its  operation  interrupted  by  embittered  disagreements. 
It  is  that  industry  itself  has  come  to  hold  a  position  of 
exclusive  predominance  among  human  interests,  which 
no  single  interest,  and  least  of  all  the  provision  of  the 


184  THE  ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETY 

material  means  of  existence,  is  fit  to  occupy.  Like  a 
hypochondriac  who  is  so  absorbed  in  the  processes  of 
his  o"vvn  digestion  that  he  goes  to  his  grave  before  he  ha= 
begun  to  live,  industrialized  communities  neglect  the 
very  objects  for  which  it  is  worth  while  to  acquire  riches 
in  their  feverish  preoccupation  with  the  means  by  which 
riches  can  be  acquired. 

That  obsession  by  economic  issues  is  as  local  and 
transitory  as  it  is  repulsive  and  disturbing.  To  future 
generations  it  will  appear  as  pitiable  as  the  obsession 
of  the  seventeenth  century  by  religious  quarrels  appears 
to-day;  indeed,  it  is  less  rational,  since  the  object  with 
which  it  is  concerned  is  less  important.  And  it  is  a 
poison  which  inflames  every  wound  and  turns  each 
trivial  scratch  into  a  malignant  ulcer.  Society  will  not 
solve  the  particular  problems  of  industry  which  afflict 
it,  until  that  poison  is  expelled,  and  it  has  learned  tn 
see  industry  itself  in  the  right  perspective.  If  it  is  to 
^do  that,  it  must  rearrange  its  scale  of  values.  It  must 
1  regard  economic  interests  as  one  element  in  life,  not  as 
\  the  whole  of  life.  It  must  persuade  its  members  to 
renounce  the  opportunity  of  gains  which  accrue  without 
any  corresponding  service,  because  the  struggle  for  them 
keeps  the  whole  community  in  a  fever.  It  must  so 
organize  industry  that  the  instrumental  character  of 
economic  activity  is  emphasized  by  its  subordination  to 
the  social  purpose  for  which  it  is  carried  on. 


INDEX 


Abolition  of  private  ownership, 
147 

Absenteeism,  152 
Absolute  rights,  50-51 
Absolutism  in  industry,  144 
Acquisitive  societies,  29-32 
Administration,  115-116 
Allocation  of  power,   163-164 
American    Constitution,    18-19, 

52 
Annuities,  74 
Arbitration,  compulsory,   101 

Bacon,  quoted,  58,  181 

Bentham,   16,  52,  55 

Brain  workers,  position  of  the, 
161-171 

British  Coal  Industry,  reorgan- 
ization of,   166-171 

Building  Guilds,  103 

Building  Trade  Report,  106-110 

Bureaucracy,  116,  149 

Capitalism,  and  production, 
173-176;  downward  thrust  of, 
154;  in  America,  101;  losing 
control,  141-142,  148 

Cecil,  Lord  Hugh,  23,  58 

Cecil,  Robert,  59 

Cecil,  William,  59 

Church  and  State,  10-13 

Coal  Industry  Commission,  71, 
126,  137,  143;  report  of,  166- 
167 

Coal  Mines  Committees,  152 

Combinations,  125,  130 

Committee  on  Trusts,  153 

Competition,  27 

Compulsory  arbitration,  101 

Confiscations,   103 

Conservatism,  the  New,  28 

Consiuner,  exploitation  of  the, 
133-134 


Co-operative      Movement 
cost  of  coal,  125 


and 


Dante,  quoted,  182-183 
Death   Duties,  22 
Democratic  control,   116 
Dickenson,    Sir    Arthur    Lowes, 

71 
Directorate  control,  129 
Duckham,  Sir  Arthur,  119 
Duke    of     Wellington,    quoted, 

123 

Economic    confusion,    cause    of, 

131-132 
Economic    discontent,     increase 

of,   5 
Economic  egotism,  27, 
Economic  expansion,  9 
Efficiency,  the  condition  of,  139- 

160;       through      Esprit      de 

Corps,  149-150 
Employer,  waning  power  of  the, 

140 
England,  and  natural  right,  15- 

16;     and    France    contrasted, 

16-17;    Industrialism   in,   44- 

47;  Liberal  Movement  in,  18; 

over-crowding    of    population 

in,  37 ;  proprietary  rights  in, 

64  et  seq. 
English  landlordism,  22-23 
Englishmen,   characteristics   of, 

1-3;  vanity  of,  129 
English  Revolution  of  1688,  52 
Esch-Cummins  Act,  118 
Expediency,   rule  of,    16 

Feudalism,  18 
Fixed  salaries,  177-178 
Forced  labor,  102 
France,    social    and    industrial 
conditions  in,  16-17;   Feudal- 


185 


186 


INDEX 


ism    in,     18;     Revolution     in, 
If),  65,  60 
French  Revolution,  15,  65,  6ft 
Function,   definition   of,    8;    as 
a  basis  for  remuneration,  41- 
42;    as  a   basis  of  social   re- 
organization,   ISO;    Function 
and  Fnedom,  7 
Functional  Society,  29,  84-90 
Function]  ess      property-owners, 
79,    SO;    abolishment    of,    87- 
88;   an  expensive  luxury,   87 

Gainford,  Lord,  quoted,  26,  111 

Gantt,  H.  L.,  175 

Government     control     in     war 

time,  25-26 
Ground-rents  89-90,  91 

Hobson,  Mr.,  63 
"Hundred-Family  Man,"   178 

Imperial  Tobacco  Company,  116 

Incomes,  41 

Income  Tax,  22 

Income  without  service,  68 

Individualism,  48-49 

Individual   rights,  9 

Individual  rights  vs.  social 
functions,  27 

Industrial   prol)]ems,  7 

Industrial  reorganization,  151, 
155 

Industrial    revolution,   ft 

Industrial  societies,  9 

Industrial  warfare,  cause  of, 
and  remedy  for,  40-42 

Industrialism,  18;  a  poison, 
184;  compared  to  Militarism, 
44-46;  exaggerated  estimate 
of  its  importance,  45-46; 
failure  of  present  system, 
13ft-141;  nemesis  of,  33-51; 
spread  of,  30;  tendency  of, 
31-32 

Industry,  and  a  profession,  94, 
97;  as  a  profession,  91  et 
srq.,  125 -r2('i;  deficiencies  of, 
147;  definition  of,  6;  how 
private  control  of  may  be 
terminated,  103-104;  and  the 


advantages  of  such  a  change, 
106;  Building  Trades'  Plan 
for,  108,  111  ;  motives  in,  155- 
159;  nationalization  of,  104, 
114-118;  present  organiza- 
tion of  intolerable,  129;  pur- 
pose of,  8,  46,  181;  right  or- 
ganization of,  6-7  ;  the  means 
not  the  end,  46-47 

Inheritance  taxes,  90 

Insurance,  74 

Joint  control,   111-112 
Joint-stock  companies,  CyC 
Joint-stock  organizations,  97 

Labor,   absolute  rights   of,   28; 

and     capital,     98-100,      108; 

compulsory,    100;    control    of 

breaking   do\\Ti,    139    et   srq.  ; 

degradation    of,    35;     forced, 

102 
League   of  Nations,    101 
Liberal   Movement,   18 
Locke,   14,  52,  55 

Management      divorced       from 

ownership,  112-113 
Mann,  Sir  John,  126 
Militarism,  44-45 
Mill,  (luoted,  89 
Mine     managers,     position     of, 

162,    I  <•)(•)- 168 
Mining  royalties,  23-24,  88 

Nationalism,    48-49 
Nationalization,     114,     117;     of 

the  Coal    Industry,   115,    165, 

168-169 
Natural    right    in    France,    15; 

in    England,    15-16;    doctrine 

of,  21 

OfTicials,  position  under  the 
y>riHent  economic  system,  162 

Old  industrial  order  a  failure, 
139;  its  effect  on  the  con- 
sumer,   144 

Organi/af  ion,  for  public  service 
instead  of  private  gains,   127 

Over-centralization,    121 


INDEX 


187 


Ownership,  a  new  Bystem  of, 
112-114 

Pensioners,  34 

Poverty  a  symptom  of  social 
disorder,  5 

Private  enterprise  and  public 
ownership,  118-120 

Private  ownership,  120;  aboli- 
tion of,  147 ;  of  industrial 
capital.   105-106 

Private  rights  and  public  wel- 
fare, 14-15 

Privileges,  24 

Producer,  obligation  of  the, 
127-128;  responsibility  of, 
128 

Production,  increased,  5 ;  large 
scale  and  small  scale,  87 ; 
misdirection  of,  37-39;  why 
not   increased,   136 

Productivity,  4,  46 

Professional  Spirit,  the,  149- 
150 

Profits,  and  production,  173- 
176;   division  of,   133 

Proletariat,  19,  65 

Property,  absolute  rights  of, 
52,  80;  and  creative  work, 
52  et  seq.;  classification  of, 
63,  64;  complexity  of,  75; 
functionless,  76-77,  81;  in 
land,  56-60;  in  rights  and 
royalties,  62 ;  minority  owner- 
ship of,  79 ;  most  ambiguous 
of  categories,  53-54;  passive 
ownership  of,  62;  private,  70- 
72;  protection  of,  78-79; 
rights,  50-51 ;  security  in,  72- 
73;  socialist  fallacy  regard- 
ing, 86 

Proudhon,  54 

Publicity  of  costs  and  profits, 
85,    123-124,    126,    132 

Redmayne,  Sir  Richard,  149 
Reformation   the,    10-13;    effect 

on   society,    12-14 
Reform  Bill  of   1832,  69 
Religion,  10;   changes  in,  11-12 
Report    of    the    United    States 


Industrial  Commission,  1916, 
128-129 

Riches,   meaning  of,  98 

Rights  of  Man,  French  Decla- 
ration of,   the,   16,   52 

Rights,  and  Functions,  8-19; 
doctrine  of,  21  et  seq,  43-44; 
without  functions,  61 

Rights    of   the   shareholder,    75 

Royalties,   23-24,   62 

Royalties,  and  property,  70; 
from  coal  mining  properties, 
88;  a  tax  upon  the  industry 
of  others,  89 

Sankey,  Justice,   115,   117,   143, 

165,   167,  168,   169 
Security  of  income,  73-75 
Service  as  a  basis  of  remunera- 
tion, 25,  41-42,  85,   133 
Shareholders,  91-92 
Shells,  cost  of  making,  124-125 
Smith,  Adam,   15,   52,   95 
Social   inequality,   36-37 
Social  reorganizations,  schemes 

for,  5 
Social   war,  40 
Socialism,  53 

Society,  duality  of  modern,  135 
Society,     functional     organiza- 
tion of,  52 
State  management,  116,  117 
Steel   Corporation,   116 
Supervision  from  within,  151 
Syndicalism,   130 

Taxation,   22 

Trusts,  Report  on,  23 

United    States,    transformation 

in,   65 
Utilitarians,  the  English,   17 
Utility,    16-17 

"Vicious  Circle,"  the,  43,  123- 

138 
Voltaire,  quoted,  55 

Wages  and  costs,  131 

Wages  and  profits,  78 

Wealth,    acquisition    of,    20    et 


188  IXDKX 

srq. ;   as  foundation   for  ptih-  Womi'n  Hplf-supporting,  74 
lie    cetoem,    35-3fi;     distribu-  Worker  and  Sprndcr,  77-7S 
tioji    of     on     ha.sia    of     func-  Workers,      collectivp      rcaponsi- 
tion,  77;  fallacy  of  increased,  liility  of,  ir)4 
42-4r);    how    to    increase   out-  Workers'   control,    I'iS 
put  of,  147;  inequality  of,  .T7-  Workmen,     as     "hands,"     l.'>2; 
;{S ;   limitation  of,  .Sr)-.S7 ;  out-  ])rcsent   independence  of,   Mil- 
put     of,      .37-.'?J^;      production  14G;      resp()nsi!)ili(y     of     de- 
and    consumption    of — a    con-  st roved.    1 ').'!- ir)4;   servants  of 
trast,  77-7S;    waste  of,  37-39  sliareholders.    l.S()-i:{7;    treat- 
Whitley  Councils,  110  mcnt  of,   152-153 


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